Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

That said, there is a critical weakness these kinds of landings suffer from. He’s not allowed to stockpile supplies, so he can only unload as much supply as the unit can hold. Drive off his fleet and his units can be eliminated in detail as they will run out of supply very quickly.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Edit: It also appears he sailed up the river past your CD guns and landed troops from the river... That is worse than gamey if that is the case. Those guns should prohibit such a move.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

My take on it is yes it is gamey. Mainly due to the fact the game doesn’t allow you to build up coastal defenses as you see fit. You’re stuck with the units that history gives you in the locations that history placed them and your opponent is free to bypass historical strongpoints and there is nothing you can do about it except pull something from somewhere else it’s needed to try and fill the gap, thus exposing that other location to risk.

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Here is my post to this question from JZanes AAR:

Just my opinion - I think landing in non-base hexes is just fine and dandy - not gamey at all. I think the game handles it well enough (is there anything an engine of this scale could handle perfectly?).

My opponent's forces got smacked around by CD guns at Darwin. The terrain around there is so good I was surprised he faced the guns instead of landing elsewhere.

That's my opinion, I understand some folks feel otherwise.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

thanks for the input everyone. Rader and I have agreed to a house rule forbidding these attacks.

As I see it, there are just too many opportunities to exploit the non-base landing thing and no viable way to defend against it. The implications of being able to drop a massive force outside a base, cutting it off, and capturing it the "easy" way are just too devastating to fair (and fun) play. If you look around the map, you'll see that there is at least a "dot" base at each of the places that people amphibious assaulted during the war. I'm thinking that's our hint that these are the places that have viable landing beaches.

People talk about historical examples of landing at a beach away from a base but remember these are 46 mile hexes. Those beaches would be in the base hex in WITP terms. If there was a war in the atlantic version of WITP, the allies would've landed at a base hex called "Cherbourg" or "Caen" representing all 5 landing beaches with the coastal defenses reflected by a CD unit in the base. Plus, remember we're talking about Siberia here. These aren't lovely coral sand beaches that the japanese are landing on. This non-base hex is cold, desolate, wind-swept, and totally wild 40+ miles from the nearest sizable human settlement. Sure, he took heavy losses in troops and disruption when he landed but he can immediately jump on the road and motor on into the city. I can't see how this could've happened in real life.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

My opponent landed at the non-base hex south of Nikolaevsk (in the Soviet Far East). He intends to march into Nikolaevsk and capture it without facing the CD guns. Here's my response to him (I'll leave it to him to post his side if he wants);

"I just started watching the turn and noticed you landed at a non-base/non-dot hex. I would like to ask for a house rule forbidding this kind of landing. There's no way we can defend every coastal hex and landing at an undefended hex allows one to get an unfair advantage (IMHO). In otherwords, non-base landings end up gaming the system.

I'm willing to play on from here as this landing will just speed up the inevitable fall of Nikolaevsk, but how about no more from this point?"

What do you think, gamey or not?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns


That said, there is a critical weakness these kinds of landings suffer from. He’s not allowed to stockpile supplies, so he can only unload as much supply as the unit can hold. Drive off his fleet and his units can be eliminated in detail as they will run out of supply very quickly.

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Here is my post to this question from JZanes AAR:

Just my opinion - I think landing in non-base hexes is just fine and dandy - not gamey at all. I think the game handles it well enough (is there anything an engine of this scale could handle perfectly?).

My opponent's forces got smacked around by CD guns at Darwin. The terrain around there is so good I was surprised he faced the guns instead of landing elsewhere.

That's my opinion, I understand some folks feel otherwise.

quote:

ORIGINAL: castor troy


if it isn´t gamey, then I wouldn´t land at any heavily defended base anymore. Only pick off those that are lightly defended. Not suffering any losses from the invasion makes it well worth it having to march two weeks. Landing in safety, marching, taking the base and recover will still be faster than landing at the base, suffer hard, take the base and recover. It´s kind of the same with night bombing, start doing it extensively, your opponent does the same and voila, NBITB, night bombing in the Pacific. If you allow it once to land in a non base hex, you have to allow it always and this can lead to a pretty much off situation IMO, depending on which people are playing the PBEM. For my part, if my opponent would do it, I wouldn´t stand back and do the same if it suits me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: seydlitz

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

thanks for the input everyone. Rader and I have agreed to a house rule forbidding these attacks.

As I see it, there are just too many opportunities to exploit the non-base landing thing and no viable way to defend against it. The implications of being able to drop a massive force outside a base, cutting it off, and capturing it the "easy" way are just too devastating to fair (and fun) play. If you look around the map, you'll see that there is at least a "dot" base at each of the places that people amphibious assaulted during the war. I'm thinking that's our hint that these are the places that have viable landing beaches.

People talk about historical examples of landing at a beach away from a base but remember these are 46 mile hexes. Those beaches would be in the base hex in WITP terms. If there was a war in the atlantic version of WITP, the allies would've landed at a base hex called "Cherbourg" or "Caen" representing all 5 landing beaches with the coastal defenses reflected by a CD unit in the base. Plus, remember we're talking about Siberia here. These aren't lovely coral sand beaches that the japanese are landing on. This non-base hex is cold, desolate, wind-swept, and totally wild 40+ miles from the nearest sizable human settlement. Sure, he took heavy losses in troops and disruption when he landed but he can immediately jump on the road and motor on into the city. I can't see how this could've happened in real life.

Given the way the Russian set up is done in the game, there are no dot bases to land at and the few named ports are all defended by extremely deadly fort and CD units. The only practical way to do it without losing a lot of ships post patch 3 would be to land in a non-dot hex and take your chances. So I would not call it gamey at all.

You have more than enough soviet subs with good torpedoes to make his attempts to unload and supply across that non-dot hex very difficult. I hope that you are making good use of them.

quote:

Interesting that the Great Australian Bight is being discussed. When I made the map, I actually wanted to make the Bight "un-invadeable" (is that a word?), but I didn't, simply because I looked for, but could not find, a map that showed exactly which parts of the Bight have the high cliffs. So not wanting to just guess, I left it alone (also taking into account that there were not likely to be a lot of invasions there).

So if someone does have a good idea of exactly which stretches of the Bight coastline are lined with cliffs I could happily amend the map to suit.

By the way, not all coastal hexes are able to be invaded in AE. For example, swamp hexes are not able to be invaded. This is done using a "not able to be invaded" attribute in the hex data. There is no need to use impassable hexsides like there was for the old WitP map.

So if there are other specific locations that could not be invaded at all (along the entire stretch of coast included in the hex) they could be treated in the same way.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the invasion of non-base hexes. That is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned. But I know there are a lot of people who prefer to restrict invasions in that way.

Andrew

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Andrew Brown gave the definitive answer as far as AE technically in the other thread. Obviously you should still agree with your opponent on whatever you want. For those of you who don't know, Andrew made the map.

Here is Andrew's post:

quote:

Interesting that the Great Australian Bight is being discussed. When I made the map, I actually wanted to make the Bight "un-invadeable" (is that a word?), but I didn't, simply because I looked for, but could not find, a map that showed exactly which parts of the Bight have the high cliffs. So not wanting to just guess, I left it alone (also taking into account that there were not likely to be a lot of invasions there).

So if someone does have a good idea of exactly which stretches of the Bight coastline are lined with cliffs I could happily amend the map to suit.

By the way, not all coastal hexes are able to be invaded in AE. For example, swamp hexes are not able to be invaded. This is done using a "not able to be invaded" attribute in the hex data. There is no need to use impassable hexsides like there was for the old WitP map.

So if there are other specific locations that could not be invaded at all (along the entire stretch of coast included in the hex) they could be treated in the same way.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the invasion of non-base hexes. That is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned. But I know there are a lot of people who prefer to restrict invasions in that way.

Andrew

quote:

ORIGINAL: ChickenOfTheSea
Japanese doctrine would have been to land and march overland rather than perform a frontal assault on heavy coastal defenses. However, I want to hear from those who have actually tested this in game to see how well the game handles it. It should be an option if the game engine can handle it.

quote:

However, sailing up the river past coastal defenses was defintiely gamey.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


I spent some time last night on Google Earth looking at the Bight. Obviously, that resource doesn't offer 3-D rotations in order to see cliff heights, but it really brings home the vastness of that area of the continent.

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


I spent some time last night on Google Earth looking at the Bight. Obviously, that resource doesn't offer 3-D rotations in order to see cliff heights, but it really brings home the vastness of that area of the continent.

Google Maps, AFAIK, does not allow you to rotate the view but Google Earth does to a large degree at least. Be warned that Google Earth by default shows heights as several times their actual height so as to give a better feel for height differences. If you don't realize that you might think an object is much taller than it is IRL.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JWE

quote:

ORIGINAL: ChickenOfTheSea
Japanese doctrine would have been to land and march overland rather than perform a frontal assault on heavy coastal defenses. However, I want to hear from those who have actually tested this in game to see how well the game handles it. It should be an option if the game engine can handle it.

Tested extensively, COTS, and allowing assaults on your everyday coast hex was deemed allowable, for just the reason you express. It was felt that the unload/support/supply penalties would be sufficient to give pause to the ops planners.

quote:

However, sailing up the river past coastal defenses was defintiely gamey.

Definitely gamey. The code does not activate the USSR until after some "event" happens. So you can sail the Combined Fleet up the Amur River if you want. Game is set up to respond to reasonable moves and counter-moves, by players that know what's going on. Yes, you can cheat, and cheat unmercifully. But just because you can cheat doesn't mean the game is broken, it just means the cheater is broken.

There are code restraints that allow the game to function correctly when players play 'nominally'. There are some areas that are susceptible to HRs, because of the game mechanics, but those ought to be reasonable and sufficient. When people cheat, all bets are off. Who would ever play these people anyway? This ain't Dungeons and Dragons.

I would ignore the whining, and allow some hits on open coastal hexes.