Paratroops Question

[kevin]

Is there any way of dropping ATGM or vehicles successfully? Nothing is more annoying to me than building an airborne task force and then having my Airborne Tank designated MGS or Airborne Javelins teams all die after landing.

[PlasmaKrab]

On what terrain did you send them?
Dropping onto clear terrain helps, as opposed to sending the guys breaking legs in a rock garden

[kevin]

it's clear terrain, no problems, no reason for it. It annoys me too that the normal airborne squads take casualties too. It's pretty rare.

[kevin]

It pretty rare IRL for airborne troops to take casualties on landing that is. It happens I'm sure, but make it a 1 / 100 chance not the 1 in 15 I seem to always have.

[Pergite]

I had to try this one out myself and found it strange as well so I tested some different Abn ATGM systems and combinations aircraft.

I dropped two french Abn Atgm (Milan) sections in a open grassy field. One of them got destroyed, the other suffered one casualty.

Then I on the same map dropped two brittish para sections, with the same weaponsystem, but this time in the middle of thick jungle and in ondulating terrain. No casualties and they where all ready to fight the next turn.
Both dropped from C130:s in the same scenario.

Does country training factor in on this? Or what is it all about?

[Mobhack]

Pergite said:
I had to try this one out myself and found it strange as well so I tested some different Abn ATGM systems and combinations aircraft.

I dropped two french Abn Atgm (Milan) sections in a open grassy field. One of them got destroyed, the other suffered one casualty.

Then I on the same map dropped two brittish para sections, with the same weaponsystem, but this time in the middle of thick jungle and in ondulating terrain. No casualties and they where all ready to fight the next turn.
Both dropped from C130:s in the same scenario.

Does country training factor in on this? Or what is it all about?

It's about chance rolls - the Brits were lucky.

I'll have a look at the chance factors for real paratroopers, but vehicles are always bad news to throw out of a plane. (In real life they would take 20 minutes or so to unpack from the drop palette, then they would need to be fuelled and loaded from separate palletes of ammo and fuel landed separately). Parachuted vehicles would be dropped empty (including crew!).

- I was going to remove the ability of vehicles to be thrown off planes while dangling on big hankies (It was not a design decision to alow vehicles to drop, it was a side effect the playtesters found, and I was going to remove as an unintended bug, but they persuaded me to leave it in with the above caveat - that the higher casualties were vehicles which were destroyed or renderd unserviceable by the drop . Allegedly that balances the fact that surviving ones are ready to roll instantly, instead of an hour or 2 after the drop. I'm still not convinced by that logic myself, Iam of the opinion that vehicle dropping should be removed as unrealistic in the game time frame, but have left it in for those who want the faciltiy, though it's decidedly unrealistic !

It will go if I get round to doing transport planes that land and take off, like gliders which do not self-destruct, maybe. But that is a back-burner item for a future release. Vehicles ready to roll off a landed transport are more realistic IMHO. (One work-around for now may be to designate a herky bird as a glider in the OOB as a "landing-only" transport plane? - engine noise would be strange though!)


Cheers
Andy