UPDATED: Restrict Airlifting by level of research of unit

Germanico · Jan 11th 2018, 5:59pm

Guys - I would like to ask you for some honest and serious feedback on a change we are planning:

in the recent months we have more and more come to the conclusion that having the ability to airlift basically all units is really detrimental to the overall gameplay

a) detrimental for defending players because active players can quickly relocate their entire attack force including tanks and steam roll
b) detrimental to a naval units because essentially they watch from the sideline instead of doing their job of protecting sea lanes and keeping air sup over water(edited)
c) detrimental for tactical gameplay because ports and harbors, islands and straits really serve no important war time purpose on a tactical or strategical scale

We would therefore propose the following:

UPDATED 01/12/18

1) we need some gradual system allowing air mobility to increase - after all modern C17 Globemaster actually can carry an M1A2 or 3 Bradleys + equip and personnel
One idea we could consider which would be easily implementable is to tie airlift to the level of unit research. We could then have most inf and some light units have it day 1 (tier1) most mid weight equip day 10-15 (tier 2) and and the heavy equip starts flying late, around day 25 (tier 3)
Downside to this is the fact that units which are not upgraded accordingly will be not able to airlift, but I really would NOT like to start new researches for non-military units such as transport planes and ships etc
Additionally we could provide better ranges for air transports as well - but that's kinda besides the point. Even in the 80s Reforger the idea was to fly in the soldiers via transatlantic / intercontinental and ship the equip by boat. After all a 747 is rather "global"
This would allow us to retain our current setup without much change or deep coding, while essentially simulating air lift focus (if you don't upgrade your tanks you probably dont put much emphasis on them, meaning you probably won't have a big fleet of heavy lifting C17s or such)

Main game design reasons NOT tying airtransport to buildings or research is twofold:
a) we don't have time/day unlocks on buildings meaning a paying player could easily unbalance the whole early game by building eg. Airport level 5 day 1 and zoom around - something no-one would ever rightfully expect or have any viable counter against
b) if we'd use airports or transport research as the unlock the player again would need only one high level airbase or one research and once again ignore shipping completely (not realistic because even the USAF isn't able to eg shift a whole corps via air and loads of stuff is still shipped (see current buildup of forces in Europe)

2) There needs to be a substitute to move heavy equip by land/sea until airlift becomes viable (late game?) Proposal: Increase the role of military logistics (and no they aren't broken - they are invisible to other players currently but this would then be overhauled)
We could "simply" add one or two more levels of logistics, color coding and beautifying it a bit (no more spider web), simulating military rail and road, warehousing and supply chain - making travel via land faster than now
Sea travel is already very fast once you hit deep water (we deliberately sped it up so ferrying across the pacific doesn't take a week or such in game - but obviously we could also look at increasing naval transport speeds over time - tbd, but not a real problem (faster shipping)

3) current Air Transports are to powerful and have to many HP - propose nerf to 10 HP (used to be 5 - now 15 - middle ground is probably the sweet spot)
4) potentially we could increase the Airport building HP a bit and make them damaged on takeover, which is realistic as they would normally need at least some maintenance, even if not destroyed, so it would take at least a few hours depending on the fighting damage to repair and shuttle in troops

heshamx · Jan 11th 2018, 6:43pm

I don't see this as a good move. how am i supposed to send reinforcements for defense if i am attacked, what about moving TDS to that new towns you have just invaded on the other side of the continent?
I usually have central defenses in several areas if i get attacked in an area i send reinforcements , so disabling air lifting for tanks and support units makes the defending mission harder, but for the attacker he has already moved enough troops in the area , and that would make it impossible to coalition member to help you defend you if he has no direct borders with you in that area.
this change is a total game changer for strategies implemented as we always build air strips and airports to facilitate movements now if i can only move infantry to be killed by artillery before being engaged in combat

Seele07 · Jan 11th 2018, 6:59pm

The attacker have the time to move the troops on the important positions. The defender havnt the time, he must react. And if the troops from the defender on the other side of the world the defender has no change.

Only infantry types is the wrong way. Also the support types like TDS mobile anti air, and towed artillery must have the air transport. And the AA-Tank is also a special light tank and must have air transport.

My suggestion: Support units must have an airbase 2 for transport.

You want have more naval units in the game? If you changed only the air transport, the playerd will research only aircrafts and infantry, because we have only 2 research slots and very long research times.

My suggestion: 3 limited research slots
1. Slot only for infantry, tanks and support units
2. Slot only for helicopters, aircrafts and missles
3. Slot only for ships, submarines and big aircrafts

Then the players must build a modern army. In many games I have seen player nations which has no air force or navy.

Liqter · Jan 11th 2018, 7:46pm

In order to airlift anything into enemy territory you must first build an airfield . province or town must be defended for 24+ hours.
If you are going to restrict airlifting i would suggest heavy armor , large complex units be restricted , MBT , TDS come to mind.
Towed artillery , AA , Combat Recon should be allowed to airlift IMO , recon is the lightest armored vehicle and it is your scout and dies to any armored unit , air unit , small group of motorized , mech or a light breeze.
Where does this leave anti tank guns ? early versions had no armor , just a 20mm gun with a small shield in some cases , later versions are a light tank with a big gun.
Rotating wounded armor and support out to a hospital city will no longer be possible.

Liqter · Jan 11th 2018, 8:00pm

Liqter wrote:

In order to airlift anything into enemy territory you must first build an airfield . province or town must be defended for 24+ hours.
If you are going to restrict airlifting i would suggest heavy armor , large complex units be restricted , MBT , TDS come to mind.
Towed artillery , AA , Combat Recon should be allowed to airlift IMO , recon is the lightest armored vehicle and it is your scout and dies to any armored unit , air unit , small group of motorized , mech or a light breeze.
Where does this leave anti tank guns ? early versions had no armor , just a 20mm gun with a small shield in some cases , later versions are a light tank with a big gun.
Rotating wounded armor and support out to a hospital city will no longer be possible.

A thought i had after my above post. If you are going to remove airlift from everything other than infantry i suggest that you allow all units with helicopter transport ability to use carrier decks.

static yoshi · Jan 11th 2018, 9:00pm

I don't think that change fully makes sense, it would hurt the defender more than the attacker as the attacker would have his army in position before declaring war, the defense may not. I do think things should be more dependent on straits and naval routes to help out with Navy. So i would like to ask how about air lift for units (at least some) be based on either airbase level, research, or both.

JCS Darragh · Jan 11th 2018, 9:19pm

NEGATIVE DO NOT DO THIS! Listen, IRL, we have planes that can carry Tanks and several APCs and what not. If you are going to remove the ability to fly tanks and what not in, then add the ability to transport tanks via Railroad, and no, you shouldn't have to hold a province for 24 Hours, because irl, The Air Force can start flying in stuff as soon as an Airfield is taken. If anything, The load times should be faster and the planes should also be faster, the USAF can fly anything to anywhere, any time too, I.E. Infantry unit needs a supply drop? USAF C-130s or C-17s will be there in a few hours if they can. I will agree though, if you are going to remove it, then do it to MBTs, I disagree with removing it at all, but meh, I can't control it right now.

Marshal Zhukov · Jan 11th 2018, 9:44pm

I like it as it will force people to have a defense in place rather then simply depend on the ability to rapidly airlift in a defense force. I may be in the minority, but, I would prefer methods like this with the effect of slowing down, the rush tactics that seem all too common as they are very effective. This is a balancing issue obviously as I know many players like the rush tactics and prefer faster games, hence the popularity of the 4x speed maps, while a minority, like me, prefer the longer game with deeper strategy if possible.

The ultimate solution would be to set it up so these are options at game creation and you could auto-generate different types of games for different preferences, though that would take development resources so may not be feasible

Efreet · Jan 11th 2018, 10:06pm

That's interesting concept.

Some positives I see:
1) Armored units with air strikes by helicopters can be used more often. I like tanks but light is fast, heavy is slow - that's fair i guess.
2) There's a chance that players will start to use military logistics (which is probably bugged or I don't see any effect - see bug section ). There's a great potential in this structure. Anyway, i didn't notice anyone who build it in last month. There is also chance that players will be more concentrated to damage support lines first, which seems to be more realistic.
3) Mechanized Infantry can back to use also. I think it was in a shadow of aeromobile infantry.
Negatives:
4) It's hard to repair tank even now. There's a risk that it may be more difficult because of much slower access to high level hospitals. (By the way, I think repair is another matter to redesign, because it's easier to produce a new tank, than repair the old one - percent of hpmax healing instead of fixed value should be implemented, maybe.)
Other thoughts:
5) Some adjustment of men power could prevent infantry swarming.
6) Infantry mainly uses supplies, while tanks mainly uses components so it's logical to mix units anyway.
7) 'Heavies' could transport fast by military logistics \ ships, 'Lighties' - same, plus airlift.

abradyson1 · Jan 11th 2018, 10:27pm

if by airlift you mean planes, no, I do not believe the ability to airlift vehicles should be removed. Perhaps the ability to air assault certain vehicles should be removed? I think that would be a prospectively larger problem, since it is so much quicker. But I don't think that airlifting is currently detrimental.

Doktor Faust · Jan 11th 2018, 11:20pm

Germanico wrote:

We would therefore propose to LIMIT AIR LIFTING TO ALL INFANTRY TYPES ONLY

This change will make non-infantry units much less useful.

a) detrimental for defending players because active players can quickly relocate their entire attack force including tanks and steam roll

Disabling the airport in the just captured city for a few hours should even the odds a little.

b) detrimental to a naval units because essentially they watch from the sideline instead of doing their job of protecting sea lanes and keeping air sup over water(edited)
c) detrimental for tactical gameplay because ports and harbors, islands and straits really serve no important war time purpose on a tactical or strategical scale

It is necessary to reduce air traffic. For example, the airport can take simultaneously the number of units equal to the level of the airport. Arriving units over the limit just wait their turn for unloading. The same for loading.

Daloganator · Jan 11th 2018, 11:45pm

I like it. You would have to devote more attention to defense and logistics. It will slow down attacks though. Might solve the rouge army issue at the same time by default.

Cyclone46 · Jan 11th 2018, 11:47pm

@Germanico

I disapprove.

I already almost never research armor of any kind. Just Infantry, air, Frigs, and AA.
This move would make armor be about as popular as radar trucks.

Armor needs to have it's role increased, not decreased.
I think this is a move in the wrong direction.

Biggest problem is with Theater Defense. Just how do you expect us to place our ICBM umbrella without air transports? I hope you will give them turbo boost or something to compensate LOL

Cyclone46 · Jan 11th 2018, 11:59pm

Here is what I would like to see though:

Air troop transports are too hardened against air assault.

In the past, they were too weak. One AS fighter could take out a 10 stack flying by.

Now... Transports are so incredibly tough, it is pointless to even attack them.
There is much better use to be made of the sortie than attacking something you can't kill.

Maybe find some middle ground?

Edit: Yep... Just now I attacked an air transport flying by with 11 Strike fighters (4-4-2-1). The transport carrying 5 units just laughed at me and went on about its business of landing LOL. Now that they are on the ground I can finally kill them. This is not right.

2nd Edit: If you found middle ground and made there be at least some degree of risk in transporting units, it would solve the issues you mention, at least to some degree.
This would also serve a dual purpose in making AS fighters more useful. As it stand they are not very useful because air battles do not occur in the air. They occur at the AIRPORT. And you need SF for that, not AS.

Germanico · Jan 12th 2018, 12:57am

Thanks everyone for the proposals and ideas.

Here is my 5ct and take-away:

1) we need some gradual system allowing air mobility to increase - after all modern C17 Globemaster actually can carry an M1A2 or 3 Bradleys + equip and personnel
One idea we could consider which would be easily implementable is to tie airlift to the level of unit research. We could then have most inf and some light units have it day 1 (tier1) most mid weight equip day 10-15 (tier 2) and and the heavy equip starts flying late, around day 25 (tier 3)
Downside to this is the fact that units which are not upgraded accordingly will be not able to airlift, but I really would NOT like to start new researches for non-military units such as transport planes and ships etc
Additionally we could provide better ranges for air transports as well - but that's kinda besides the point. Even in the 80s Reforger the idea was to fly in the soldiers via transatlantic / intercontinental and ship the equip by boat. After all a 747 is rather "global"
This would allow us to retain our current setup without much change or deep coding, while essentially simulating air lift focus (if you don't upgrade your tanks you probably dont put much emphasis on them, meaning you probably won't have a big fleet of heavy lifting C17s or such)

Main game design reasons NOT tying airtransport to buildings or research is twofold:
a) we don't have time/day unlocks on buildings meaning a paying player could easily unbalance the whole early game by building eg. Airport level 5 day 1 and zoom around - something no-one would ever rightfully expect or have any viable counter against
b) if we'd use airports or transport research as the unlock the player again would need only one high level airbase or one research and once again ignore shipping completely (not realistic because even the USAF isn't able to eg shift a whole corps via air and loads of stuff is still shipped (see current buildup of forces in Europe)

2) There needs to be a substitute to move heavy equip by land/sea until airlift becomes viable (late game?) Proposal: Increase the role of military logistics (and no they aren't broken - they are invisible to other players currently but this would then be overhauled)
We could "simply" add one or two more levels of logistics, color coding and beautifying it a bit (no more spider web), simulating military rail and road, warehousing and supply chain - making travel via land faster than now
Sea travel is already very fast once you hit deep water (we deliberately sped it up so ferrying across the pacific doesn't take a week or such in game - but obviously we could also look at increasing naval transport speeds over time - tbd, but not a real problem (faster shipping)

3) current Air Transports are to powerful and have to many HP - propose nerf to 10 HP (used to be 5 - now 15 - middle ground is probably the sweet spot)
4) potentially we could increase the Airport building HP a bit and make them damaged on takeover, which is realistic as they would normally need at least some maintenance, even if not destroyed, so it would take at least a few hours depending on the fighting damage to repair and shuttle in troops

Seele07 · Jan 12th 2018, 2:12am

For every air base/level you have a capacity from 1 per day. A nation with an airbase 3 and 3 airbases 1 have a capacity from 6.

Then you have 3 different airtransports.
1. light = 1 capacity ( mot. infantry, airmobile infnatry, special forces, CRV, towed arillery ect.)
2. medium = 2 capacities (mech. infantry, marines, AA tank, anti tank tank ect.)
3. heavy = 4 capacities (MBT, TDS, mot. artillery, rocket launcher ect.)

Germanico · Jan 12th 2018, 11:33am

Hi Seele,

I know - in many strategy games this movement limit is summed up under the term "strategic redeployment points". So effectively you can eg. quickly move the 3rd. motorized guards division from the Urals to Stalingrad, but not all of your army.

When concepting CON in the early days I actually had a design for limited redeployment, but we had to drop it due to complexity - both technically as well as from a player's perspective.

I propose we do the following: We change the system like i propose and if this still doesn't do the trick then we add a "deployment" capacity limit for Air Bases as you are rightfully suggesting.

Opulon · Jan 12th 2018, 1:05pm

A deployment limit would be a great idea in theory but sadly i can see from here the exploits

Germanico · Jan 12th 2018, 1:51pm

Well - it's been exploited throughout war times:

"Ve vill supply Stalingrad from ze air mein Fuhrer!" turns around and sends his personal envoy via transport aircraft to Paris to go shopping for crates of champagne and girls from the moulin rouge...

The rest is history

Liqter · Jan 12th 2018, 6:16pm

Some have suggested building and or unit level be used to determine airlift availability , this could and would be gold rushed for advantage .
Would it be possible to set a a "day available" limit to units ?
Infantry day 1 by default
CRV /AA airlift available day 5
SAM / Armored Fighting Vehicle Day 10
MBT / TDS day 15 or later
Something along those lines .

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