WARFARE !!! in the modern era

[dognheat]

I started thinking about how there should be different types of attacks for air and (missles, fighters, bombers) naval units.
Take a look at this and tell me what you think:

Air attacks upon units shouldn't be a unit vs unit battle to the death, as very few air attacks result in the loss of a plane. It should be a hit or miss deal, unless there was a SAM site nearby, or another fighter, then the plane could be destroyed.

-Bombers
Taking a page from Axis and Allies, you could perform a strategic bombing runs to take money from the enemy treasury. The amount lost would depend on the size and location of the city in relation to the capital. Also in relation to strategic bombing, there should be the ability to destroy production on whatever a city is currently building.

-Fighters
Air Superiority attacks could be performed to elminate fighters in the area for paradrops. Percision strikes with laser guided bombs to destroy specific improvements, or weapons of mass destruction. Cruise missles would fit into this role as well. This would allow you to target Nuclear Missles and take them out without having to go through all the city defenders.

-New unit Air Transport
Should be able to drop say 2 infantry type units or one mechanized unit.
The transport of these units could affect their strength (similar to SMAC, when drop units automaticaly lost 20% health after drop)

-SAM sites
The presence of these improvements would decrease the chance that the air missions would be successful. I'm not sure if I like this idea but I will put it out there: make the SAM site a terrain improvement or mobile unit, but include a limit that could be produced by a civ. Maybe say 20, so you could have 15 terrain SAMs and 5 mobile....I don't know.

Naval Units:

From ctp, naval units should be able to bombard a unit on the coast without incurring any damage. Also howitzers/cannon/catapult should be able to fire on adjacent naval ships. Since I am borrowing ideas from other games, I will take from Colonization, the notion that if a enemy naval unit is adjacent to a city with a costal fortress, then it should be fired upon. Desroyers and submarines would be sunk, all other should recieve a certain amount of damage.

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*PLOP*

[SerapisIV]

Air-power still hasn't proved itself to be as strong as your rules would have it be. Germany didn't peak WWII production until 1944 well into the strategic bombing of its factories. Even analysis of the Gulf War shows that our videos looked a lot better then the actual results. Being able to shut down production with a single non-nuke unit seems too strong to be within the real world abilities of airpower.

I like the idea of an air transport, being that C-130s can land pretty much anywhere someone used a bulldozer moderatly straight. I never used an air-transport in SMAC, though the idea seems very useful to me in Civ. I don't think it should be possible to transport any armored units though as it would take most if not all of the USs airlift capacity to move a full armored unit by air, something completely unreasonable except in extreme emergency situations.

I especially like the idea of SAM site terrain improvement or unit. A SAM unit should be able to attack any air unit next to itself automatically, not using the "alert - active defense" status feature of SMAC (I forget what it was called). I never figured out how to use it properly. It always seemed to defend at the wrong time and then not defend when it should.

[HisMajestyBOB]

If they have different types of nukes then AEGIS Cruisers should have a chance to shoot down the smallest types if they're in port. Also, they should be a lot more expensive. Only the US has many AEGIS Cruisers and i think we're selling a few to taiwan and japan (because of theyre anti-ballistic missle capability)

Just my 2 cents.

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Long live the King!

[airdrik]

If I remember correctly, in the first update of the civ 3 site, they may have hinted about improovements having hp's since it said that artillary (in general) will be able to bombard improovements, which would lead to different improovements having different amounts of hp's (in civ2 you could destroy a city wall just as fast as you could destroy a library with a spy, though for the first, the spy had a less chance at succeeding).

[Cyclotron]

About the idea of not being able to airlift armor units with any degree of feasability:

I have an aquaintance who is a retired Army Colonel, whom I know through Scouting. He likes to talk about how the USA should be the world's "global policeman," etc... Anyway, one of his reasons for believing this is that he tells me that the USA alone has the ability to bring any land division anywhere in the world in 24 hours, which includes artillery, tanks, and mechanized units. The moral is, even armor units can be airlifted fairly easily with the right technology and a large enough air force.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[SerapisIV]

In the opening hours of the Gulf War, just after Saddam's invasion, the US sent down armor from Germany by plane. We weren't even able to send a full brigade, let alone a division in the opening days. It took until the our ships got there for there to be any significant armor in Saudi. That was where Saddam made his mistake. If he invaded Saudi in the opening week, he possibly would've been able to capture Saudi ports and prevented our armor from getting to the battle. The whole reason why the US Army declared recently that all armored vehicles would weigh less then 17 tons is for this reason, so that they will eventually be able to actually ship an armored division to a trouble-spot somewhere in the world in 24 hours. The US can't move a division yet, but soon.

[dognheat]

What I ment by the modern era would be with the advent of the laser, stealth, rocketry, warfare circa 1980-present.

What always bothered me is that attacks by air units was always treated as a unit vs unit combat, when in reality this very rarely the case. If i want to bomb an undefended armor column, the odds of my fighter/bomber being shot down are very slim (unless of course for SAM units in the area). Ok so strategic bombing isn't a certainty. With that there could be a percentage chance for the action to be effective, say 5-10% chance of production/improvement being damaaged during a bombing attack. For Fighter droped bombs/cruise missles, it could be 15-20%. This percentage would be decreased by various factors:

The more improvements in a city, the harder to hit your target
The military presence in the city
SAM/fighters in the area which would have a 35% chance of destroying the offending unit.

The low percentage of sucess would be prohibitive for many, but with the ability to target a specific improvement could have direct payoffs in frontline cities that it could be a huge advantage. Say you really want the SETI program and the Russians are about to finish it. You could perform airstrikes against it to damage the production invested into it to give you a chance. This also opens the door to damaged improvements, not just destroyed. With a damaged improvement, you could lose the use of that improvement for a couple turns and not have to build it all over again.

Just a couple ideas, feel free to shoot them down as appropriate


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*PLOP*
[This message has been edited by dognheat (edited April 18, 2001).]

In one of my Air Force Association Mages. It’s state how many C-5, C-17 and C-130 we now have. I have been upstairs in a C-5B. There is enough seating for about 250 people, maybe a little more. If I remember correctly they told me they can carry 2 M-1s per C-5. I thing there are between 50 and 70 C-5s today. If the Air Force committed all of them to a situation we could move a petty good amount of equipment if necessary. 50 C-5 could move 12,500 troops and 100 M-1s. We would still have all of the C-17s and C-130 to move support equipment. If necessary the US would used the civilian 747, 767 to help out. Our biggest problem is not moving the people and equipment, it is fact the number of people in the Army and Marines. The Army is down to around 650,000 give or take and the Marines are about 200,000 or is it 180,000. We would have to draft like mad to get back up to the level of the Gulf War. During that war we had about 800,000 to 900,000 people in the Army.

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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 20, 2001).]

From: Sent: To: Cc: Subject:

As you see below a thread started by Cyclotron7. While I was typing my first replay to this thread I remember that I had this on a hard copy. So now that I have a scanner I’m uploading this so all of you can read it. I did send this to Firaxis and gave credit to Cyclotron7 for starting the Thread.

JOSEPHPHILDRETH@cs.com
Saturday, February 10, 2001 4:18 PM

Askthecivteam@firaxis.com; jhildreth@nvusd.k12.ca.us JOSEPHPHILDRETH@cs.com

Firepower and hit points
Before you toss this into the round can would you please read I guess this can be a major Question.

By Cyclotron7
You know, so many people complained about the problem in CTP where a few Pikeman in a good position could stomp armour flat. I think the biggest error of CTP was the lack of firepower and hit point values that were so
Great in CivIl. These values made for interesting and unpredictable units, increasing strategy: For example, a unit with a low attack but high firepower has a low chance of “hitting” the enemy, but if it does it causes massive
Damage. In CTP, You could just tally up the attack/defence values with the terrain bonuses and ahead of time tell who would win. Boring! Keep HP and firepower in Civs 3! !

Joseph 1944
This is the way I feel about combat. Let used the Pikeman. He should be able to defeat a Phalanx, Hoplite, Knight, Samurai, and Warrior because he can put his pike into the ground when you attack and impaired you. On the other hand a bowman standing or riding a horse should be able to defeat a Pikeman. Even if the Pikeman charge the Bowman. A good Bowman at 20 yards probably could hit you with 2 to 3 arrows before you would reach him. A Samurai and a Swordsman should be about even. A Warrior would loose to everyone.
At the battle of Little Big Horn the Indians (with some guns) defeated Custer and his cavalry.
So a Cavalryman would defeat Pikeman, Phalanx, Hoplite, Knight, Samurai, and Warrior, he would not automatic defeat a Longbow man standing or riding unless he is using a rifle. And none of the above would ever defeat a tank.
To defeat a tank a soldier would need a bazooka or an L. A. R. A Tank might (If lucky) damage an airplane.
The first kill by an airplane in the Korean War was an F4U Corsair defeating a Mig 15. In Vietnam 2 A-1 Skyraider shot down 2 Mig 17s. Today a pilot in a prop job would have to be very lucky.
A City without AntiAir missile or guns would never shoot down a bomber. Guns are good to about 15,000 feet, after that has to be a missile. However if the Plane is an attack fighter/bomber he could be hit and damage by a modern rifleman. There is a movie about this in Vietnam.
The F-117 would survive 90% of the time. The F-117 in Serbia was sighted and then shot down. The B-2s that flew to Serbia was never sighted by eyes or radar and survive. A fighter up looking for a B-2 will probably find him 25 to 40% of the time. I saw a B-2 at Travis AFB last summer doing flybys. When he turn so that all you could see is a line in the sky, it was hard to see him just 2 to 3 miles Away.
Also I have seen a U-2 disappear at about 15 thousands feet on a clear day. It is the paint they used. We never lost a single SR-71 to enemy action although they have tried many times. So the spy plane in the game should never be damage. The SR-71 flies to high and to fast to be hit. There is no air up there for a missile to guide on. The story goes that when the pilot sees the smoke from the missile disappear (above 65,000) he makes a turn and the missile cannot follow him.
In the U-2 it is a bit harder. He flies at about 80,000 ft. He is going around 500 mph. If he the pilot turns too hard, one wing will stall (the lower wing tip), and the upper wing tip will go supersonic and rip the airplane apart. In the movie “13 days” the U-2 evading the SAMs is not correct.
In Russia the Russian shot several missile at our U-2 and finally the plane ran into some of the debris and was shot down, not from a direct hit.
On ships, prior to WW I shore batteries did fire on the ships of the day and could damage them. After we went to rifled guns on ships a shore batteries had a Tough time hitting Battleships.
I believe that modern ships should not be harm when attacking a city unless there are shore batteries available. All ship that carries any type of guns should be able to fire at cities or targets on the shores.
All cannons and artillery should be able to fire on ships adjacent to the shoreline. All ships and artillery should be ranged units.
Submarines especially Nuclear Submarines should have the same range has surfaced ships. Nuclear submarines are very fast. I know this for a fact because I help build SSN 662, 665, 666, 658, 672, and the 677. I was the Structural Test Foreman on the USS Los Angeles SSN 688 at Mare Island Naval shipyard Vallejo CA just before we close the shipyard. Also it should be Very hard to detect a nuclear submarine by a surface ship. Believe me when I say they are very hard to find. (Unfortunately after today we know they can find a Japanese fishing boat with no trouble). And I do feel sorry for the missing people.
Just try to keep in mind that battleship’s can fire a shell 26 miles away From the ship. A destroyer can fire fifteen miles with his 5-inch guns. The World War 2 cruisers could fire approximately 18 miles with their eight-inch guns. The Aegis cruisers of today only carry l or 2 five-inch guns and the rest is missiles.
The Aegis cruiser should have range attack of 2 tiles because they were able to fire cruise missile from sea into Afghanistan about three years ago trying to kill the terrorist group.
Thank you for your time. Joseph



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[SerapisIV]

Nice info Joseph, there definitely has to be some increased capabilities of modern weapons as the years go on. There is too much difference between WWI tanks and Gulf War tanks to even be a contest. A good sign is that the screenshots on Firaxis' webpage shows Panzers and M1 tanks, hopefully this wish will be answered. Also the CGW screenshot showed a biplane in it, this would be even before the CivII-WWII fighter. Things are looking up for adding more and varied units to CivIII

About naval shore bombardments, SMAC was able to vastly improve on the concept with the artillery and ranged attack options. The only way a ship was damaged during bombardment was if it got caught in an artillery duel with a land artillery unit. This is definitely better as now infantry aren't damaging battleships out to sea.

I think your answer said as much as I could, I'm all for air transports but think that they should be mech infantry and down, armor and howitzers should be too heavy. But then again, thats only my opinion. May the playtesters get it right whatever they choose.

PS - Army is approx 750,000 right now, Marines 175,000 (they lost only 6,000 from Cold War numbers, God bless 'em). No clue on the Navy and Air Force, but hopefully the Navy'll get a boost out of China. We wouldn't have trouble being able to support another Gulf War sized conflict if we stopped putting all our resources in Europe as if its still the Cold War, there isn't gonna be a mjor Euro conflict in the next 20 years at least, but this is for an OT debate.

[JamesJKirk]

What about defenses in the modern era? or actually through time rather, there should be a different bonus and graphic for "fortresses" from the ancient, medieval, renaissance and modern times. As well City Walls should be obsolete when breechloading makes it better to hide in the buildings of a city, thus making city battles bloodier, costlier, and requiring a helluva lot more firepower...yeah yeah realism and all that too

[airdrik]

Talking about city walls, as was said in the civ3 site (1st update), artillary (including catapults, cannons, and howitzers) can attack city improovments including city walls. In civ 3 artillaries and howitzers should be able to destroy any city imp in about 2-3 shots, and howitzers should be able to select specific targets (using GPS information and a ton of calculations, a howitzer can shot just about any target with an error of about 1% of the distance between the howi and the target, may need to check on that). This means that city walls will become naturally obsolete when you get artillery because you can just blast them down in one attack and bring in your infantry(/armor) to duke it out inside the city.

And of course, another thing that would increase realism would be to incorporate ranges for each of the units...
But that has already been discussed a long time ago. Maybe the idea won't be so bad this time around, though.