Bombardment cost?

[Urban Ranger]

Should there be a cost associated with bombardment?

In Civ 3 certain units can bombard. This represents a large expenditure in ammunition, thus the bombardment cost.

I think the cost should be proportional to the bomdardment strength of the unit.

[Jaybe]

As long as defensive units/fortifications have an opportunity to actively defend themselves, I think that one movement point per bombardment should do fine.

As I recall, coastal defenses (I forget what they were called) open fire as soon as an enemy naval unit even moves adjacent!! There ought'a be a warning (or are they going to hold their fire until they get nice and close)?

[DarkCloud]

I believe that there should be no bombardment contest- If only for the reason that a cost for bombardment would make the game harder to manage.

[Akron]

I want my grapefruit!

Isn't the cost of units covered in support?

[Pembleton]

I'm not sure what is meant exactly by cost. Do you mean money? At first I thought it had something to do with movement or something, which obviously bombardment does take up.

Anyway, isn't the ammunition negligible to the actual cost of something like say, a battleship?

[Inverse Icarus]

if you bombard a fast unit (say a tank) does it have the chance to run and take only minimal damage?

:glares at dan:

[Mihai]

Infantry units that use gunpowder consume ammo too. IMO the cost of ammo should be included in the support cost of that unit.

An idea could be that in times of war units consume far more ammo than in times of peace and thus they cost more to support; or just those units that actually fight.

[Sabre2th]

The cost of bombardment is included in the unit support. Leave it alone.

[Madine]

In the ctp games you could adjust the readiness level of your military. This would reduce the support cost as well as the max health of your units.

Hopefully something similar to this will be in civ 3.

[Sava]

The problem is... how do you decide how much a bombardment actually costs. Ammunition is relatively cheap. I believe, according to my WWII almanac, that each 76mm shell costed about half a cent to make. Now, say a normal bombardment is a thousand shells, that's only 5 bucks. The other problem is defining how much bombarding goes on in a turn of Civ 3. If they are firing nonstop for a year period, that could be an enormous amount of ammunition.

It is too difficult an amount to assertain, and also it is too much of an insignificant cost to worry about. I say let it be part of unit cost.

[Sava]

Originally posted by UberKruX
if you bombard a fast unit (say a tank) does it have the chance to run and take only minimal damage?

:glares at dan:

The problem with that, Uber, is that what about a naval bombardment when you don't necessarily see who is bombarding you. Upon the invention of more accurate field artillery around the turn of the 20th century, bombardment was quite accurate. From 1,000 yards, a battleship could focus fire on a relatively small area with great success.

In WWI, artillery spotters gave positions for artillery to fire on, so instead of several different pieces of artillery firing on seperate targets, sometimes hundreds of piece of artillery would focus their fire on an area about 10,000 square feet. Anything in that focus of fire would not survive without being severely damaged/destroyed, or if it were personnel, killed.

In WWII, radio gave artillery spotters instant communication between the gunners and the spotters. So corrections were given immediately.

My great uncle was an artillery spotter for the 32nd artillery division during WWII. Most of my knowledge on this subject comes from him.

[Dauphin]

I think that the fiscal costs are included in maintenance costs and no additional costs should be included, but I would not be opposed to movement penalties.

For example purposes, how much US military spending is spent on ammunitions compared to their weapons maintenance? Surely the maintenance of a stealth bomber and its crews is more expensive than the payloads it delivers?

In cases were the weapon is more expensive than upkeep this is reflected by the weapon being a once-only weapons. Nukes and cruise missiles spring to mind.

[The Andy-Man]

one attack per movement point seems best, considering a tank can attack only the amount of movments it has left. Same with artillary, the only diffwerence is that further away it is less likely to hit.....

[jdd2007]

what a joke...dont u think ammunition is included in upkeep? why should it be seperate?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Madine
In the ctp games you could adjust the readiness level of your military. This would reduce the support cost as well as the max health of your units.

Hopefully something similar to this will be in civ 3.

There is something similar. It is that Peace/Normalcy/War status* which affect the costs of your units or improvements. The high anxiety part is that once you are in war status, you cannot get out of it until you're no longer at war!

Could become a real mess if other civs decide to rotate their warfare with you so that they overlap. If they knew you were at war status.

Not the same as in ctp, but should have the same affect overall.

*Peace: halves cost of improvements, doubles cost of units. War: halves cost of units, doubles cost of improvements. IIRC, this was production, not maintenance costs.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by jdd2007
what a joke...dont u think ammunition is included in upkeep? why should it be seperate?

Of course not you idiot.

If a unit does see action the whole turn, it wouldn't need to use ammo other than for annual exercises.

It's different when there's a real battle.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
I believe, according to my WWII almanac, that each 76mm shell costed about half a cent to make.

That seems to be off, way off. That wouldn't cover the cost of metal alone.

At any rate, what about 4000lb bombs or even cruise missiles that are several million dollars a pop?

[Slasher]

That seems to be off, way off. That wouldn't cover the cost of metal alone. At any rate, what about 4000lb bombs or even cruise missiles that are several million dollars a pop?

As if they had cruise missiles in WWII. And cruise missiles are very sophisticated, the bombs used in WWII were not.
In war it's about quantity and not about quality, well anyway in WWII it was.
So half a cent is possible.

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by Slasher


As if they had cruise missiles in WWII. And cruise missiles are very sophisticated, the bombs used in WWII were not.
In war it's about quantity and not about quality, well anyway in WWII it was.
So half a cent is possible.

Erm...if the bombs of WWII weren't that sophisticated, wouldn't they have built something better. And they had cruise missiles in WWII. Remember V1 and V2??.

Asmodean

[Rakki]

It's a simple fact that military stockpiles that the planners expect to last for a month tend to be fired off within a week or two so until the next stockpile is built up the soldiers' ammunition are rationed !

Maybe this can be handled by a simple adjustment in upkeep cost - units in enemy territory cost double the standard upkeep...

of course, that means if a civilization want to go to war it better have the money to pay for it...... war is an expensive business.

PS. this would significantly affect game balance against warmongers. Warmongers beware

[Kramsib]

In my opinion the only cost of bombarding must be movement, so if you move the unit you cannot bombard and if you bombard you cannot move your unit on that turn.

Someone has recalled Civ CTP, I think the status of the units: war, alert, peace was fine but I am not agree with reducing the length of the "energy" bar, the lack of strength had to be made by a modifier of the defense/attack points.

Thank you for reading this.

"Cantabria, te quiero".

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That seems to be off, way off. That wouldn't cover the cost of metal alone.

At any rate, what about 4000lb bombs or even cruise missiles that are several million dollars a pop?

In 1940's dollars its on the low side but far from being way off.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Slasher


As if they had cruise missiles in WWII. And cruise missiles are very sophisticated, the bombs used in WWII were not.
In war it's about quantity and not about quality, well anyway in WWII it was.
So half a cent is possible.

They had V-1s which are cruise missles. The Germans also had an anti-ship missle, air to air missle, and a few other things.

[Inverse Icarus]

those crazy germans. it's a wonder we won at all.

[Cyclotron]

Urban Ranger:

Upkeep is the assumed cost of all maintainance and supply of all of your units. Keep in mind that (during wartime) factories do not produce a shell for each one requested ("yeah, we used 2483 shells today, give us that many and no more"). The arms industry produces and stockpiles as much ammunition as possible during wartime, so regardless of the fighting each one of your units actually does the factories are producing (and costing you) ammo at roughly the same rate of speed as they did last turn. Obviously, more units creates more of a demand for ammo, so ammunition can be thus reflected in the upkeep of units in general, without the need for micromanagement costs. All this is assuming, of course, that the reports are true and Firaxis is using a CTP style military readiness guage.

[splangy]

he he, at the moment I posted this "Grapefruit!" is beating "yes"

Bak to the subject, I beleive the cost that goes into upkeep is MORE than enough, if 1000 civ dollers can buy a stealth bomber or two (havent checked) than 1 civ doller can buy quite a bit of amunition. And im paying them 1 per turn to stock ammo... SOOO, we should just pretend that they have enough ammo.

Or we could just play the game and not focus on abstract things like this

[Sarxis]

Adding cost to bombardment (ala Cossacks ) just adds to the micromanagement of the game. CIV games have always been about Empire control, not minute logistical details.