Re-Evaluation of landing craft

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Steel Panthers World At War & Mega Campaigns >> Re-Evaluation of landing craft

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Re-Evaluation of landing craft - 11/30/2000 4:39:00 AM

Iron Cross
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From: Friendswood, Texas, USA
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WIld Bill, Tremendous Kudos for the latest D-Day scenario (#4) involving the British. The maps were astonishingly accurate and the scenario played very well. Although I ended in a decisive German victory, what I view as a significant issue arose during the game. Please do not think I am being a whiner or complaining (the work you do is excellent and I, for one, don't have the time to create these excellent scenarios). The issue surrounds the apparent "bullet-proof" landing craft that the AI used. On a large number of occasions (25X or more), I hit landing craft (LCM, LCI, LCVP etc...) with anti-boat guns (50mm Pak, 75mm Pak, 88mm and 5 inch naval guns)which were easily large enough to at least cripple them, more likely to sink them. On most occasions, I got "no effect" or "ricochet." While I don't mind the occasional "wierd result," the landing could have been crushed even before they landed if the proper effects were modeled. I would appreciate your comments and perhaps a modification in the next OOB/etc upgrade. Thanks for the marvelous work - My wife compalins she is now a SPWAW widow!!! Major Davenport (aka Iron Cross)

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- 11/30/2000 5:13:00 AM

Dave_R
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Iron Cross I agree with you on this point. Though my experience has been the other way when doing landings. I seem to remember that in earlier versions of SPW@W there was problems with landing craft dying to easy. I suspect that the guys at Matrix have had to do a patch up job totry to fix that problem. On this point though I have read in a number of books that landing craft could take a lot of damage, due to their size. What does appear to have been a more regular occurence was a landing craft hitting the beach with all the troops it was carrying dead after a number of AP rounds had passed through the front of the craft and then passed down the length of the craft. Again I suspect that at this stage of SPW@W it will be difficult to re-model the landing craft routine but if the lads are working on their own follow up to SPW@W then this will be something that they will improve on. {crosses his fingers and hopes!}

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- 11/30/2000 8:34:00 AM

Slayer
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From: Toronto, ON, Canada
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Come to think of it, I do not believe that I have seen a landing craft die yet. Of course, I didn't mind at the time as they were always MY landing craft

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- 11/30/2000 9:13:00 AM

Mike Rothery
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From: Canberra, Australia
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I recently had a game where I had the US Landing craft gun fire support ships, and the German player bought some Raumbooten. It took about 5 turns of fire before we started sinking each other. The small stuff (.50 cal and 20mm) did almost no damage.

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- 11/30/2000 2:42:00 PM

Wild Bill
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IC, the landing craft vulnerability has been a subject of long debate between testers and programmers. At first, they were too easy to kill. That was changed, then they couldn't be killed. After some lengthy discussion, programmers relented a bit, but I agree, not enough. About the only gun you can sink a LC with is a 5" gun or better. Now I have seen some sink. I saw a few go down even in the D-Day scenarios, including Gold. The lesser guns should be more devastating against LC, especially guns of the AT variety such as the 88mm, 75mm, etc. So you do have a valid point, guys. On the other hand, they are still murder on amphibious tanks and troops disembarking. Wild Bill ------------------ In Arduis Fidelis Wild Bill Wilder Coordinator, Scenario Design Matrix Games

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- 11/30/2000 4:10:00 PM

JN
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I'am designing a scenario of a russian assault on an finnish island in '42. The russia barges are of course unstoppable with the finnish 45mm AT-guns. The problem is that the russians didn't historically use barges but smaller boats with outboard motors. With one squad per boat I guess. I haven't been able to find any other units than barges that are capable of transporting units over water. Are there any somewhere in the OOBs? A solution would be to edit the russin OOB and create a new barge with less armor that can only load one infantry squad? Another idea I had was to decrease the rally-value for the barges so that they would rout after being hit a number of times. Not a perfect solution but beats hacking the OOBs. Any ideas?

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- 11/30/2000 6:36:00 PM

Thornado
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I did a little "tryout" scenarion containing a US assault on a heavily defendend Japanese village lying quitely at the beach. Had a couple of LC-gunboats and the Japanese had three gunboats too. It took like five complete turns of massive fire from four gunboats to sink ONE of the japanese boats... Gee! I thought they never would go down... But on the other hand my barges had a great survivability against the japanese AT-guns. The only thing that could easily sink the barges was the japanese fortfification (w. its 120 mm Howitzer). So, I can agree that the boats are little bit to hard to sink. I was toying with the idea to build an archepilago (sorry 'bout the spelling) map and having the assaulting player attack island after island with the aid of gunboats etc. but now that I've seen how boring gunfights between boats can be I probably can that idea ------------------ _______________________ Thornado - You'll never know what hit you - [This message has been edited by Thornado (edited November 30, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Thornado (edited November 30, 2000).]

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- 11/30/2000 8:28:00 PM

Peregrine Falcon
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I think landing crafts and boats are currently modelled just about right. (well, most of them) A little while ago, things were quite different - You could sink landing crafts with just rifles!

Well - Here is my opinion: Because I have some knowledge about naval engagements, I should add that many ships and boats can easily stay afloat even if their superstructures and weapons (including crew!) are shot to pieces with small to medium caliber ordnance. They might leak some, maybe even list. But it might not sink easily. You need large guns - or torpedoes to easily sink a ship.

But like Wild Bill said - AP rounds are really nasty. In Normandy IIRC, german tanks fired HEAT-rounds against allied warships. Even with their thick armor, HEAT-rounds caused some heavy damage to these ships that got hit. Just one note: I was really surprised to see these large, destroyer-like ships in WAW. They look really good, but they aren't modelled quite well. (basically they are just single hex units, camouflaged to look like +150m long ships) Also they really need some better fire control, and range finders (like many other gunboats and support ships) Best to include some damage control as well, because these beauties go down too easily.

[This message has been edited by Peregrine Falcon (edited November 30, 2000).]

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- 12/2/2000 5:20:00 PM

Arralen
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I found that most boats (after all, those are not really ships) have way too much armor ... here's the "Räumboot" from the German OOB I'm working on: 213 Raeumboot R17

"Raeumboot R-17"	"R-Boot"
armor: >24 mm	armor: 12mm hull 6mm superstructure

I'll turned those values down somewhat, bu t I'm not shure about this. At least, they are not build from 24mm armor steel but from normal construction steel, which is much more ductile (sp?). And the armor thickness seems to have great influence on survivability, right short of the survivability value itself. Any comments from the designers ? Arralen [This message has been edited by Arralen (edited December 02, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Arralen (edited December 02, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Arralen (edited December 02, 2000).]

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- 12/3/2000 1:02:00 AM

Major Destruction
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by JN: [B]I'am designing a scenario of a russian assault on an finnish island in '42. If you set your scenario to a river crossing in the initial settings window, your infantry will be equipped with rubber boats. Getting the men into the rubber boats might be tricky because they would need to be on land during the deployment phase. Alternatively, you could simply change the barges to rubber boats in editor using the "change unit" button. You might want to also change the speed of the rubber boats.

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- 12/4/2000 8:05:00 PM

David F. Wall
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Just beware, because deploying the infantry into those rubber boats can be something of a nightmare, because if during scenario editing (and probably during initial deployment) you unload the boat for any reason, THE BOAT GOES AWAY. Which leaves you hoping your infantry can swim. And they can't.

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