C-130 carry amount

[jp10]

Since a C-130 can carry a RL capacity of 92 passengers, 72 combat troops or 64 paratroopers is there a game reason why a C-130 has a carry capacity of 55?

[Mobhack]

Carry is an unsigned byte. 0-255.

The Carry code is further split into 0XX, 1XX, 2XX categories for troops, guns, vehicles.

So that means only 55 maximum items carried (the last 2 digits).

Changing that field to a word (16 bits) would require a new OOB format, new save games format, and a total rewrite of all OOBs, scenarios, saved games etc.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by jp10

Since a C-130 can carry a RL capacity of 92 passengers, 72 combat troops or 64 paratroopers is there a game reason why a C-130 has a carry capacity of 55?

Because it's game CC is 255 indicating it can carry troops , guns and vehicles

if it was guns only it could be 192 and it would carry 92 troops and guns/mortars but to give it it's capability to carry vehicles it runs into the do not exceeed game number of 255 becasue that's the highest number the game will accept in that field and changing that would screw up every save game and sceanrio ever built.
There are some c-130's in the game with 164 capacity in nations that would not load a vehicle

Scenario designers can change that to 092 if they like but for the general OOB 255 is the largest number that can be used with vehicle carry capacity

Don

[dmnt]

Just asking as this popped to my mind recently but have you considered changing what the interpretation of 2xx codes would be? So that

1-99 = 1-99 grunts, only
101-199 = 1-99 grunts and/or possibly a gun / mortar / big bulky thingy
201-249 = 2-98 grunts and/or possibly a vehicle

So for carry capacity > 200 the number of troops is 2*(carry-200). With big airplanes, hovercrafts etc the number of grunts could be rounded to an even number and live with it as the relative error would be rather low. However, as I have never seen the code, I have no idea if it would require tweaking in one place or if it would require tweaking in 2^16 places. If you think it would be too many hours invested and too little gained gamewise, feel free to wave it off with that.

[Mobhack]

The carry loading is a nasty bit of code, spread out in various places, so changing it would not be trivial.

Some OObs do have the same transport plane with a 2XX code, so it can carry vehicles (but a restricted number of paras), and a version with a 1XX or 0XX code, which can carry more paras, but not vehicles.

The code is what it is, and will stay that way - since it can be worked around for trivial edge cases like big transport planes, which do not appear that often in play.

[Suhiir]

One thing I spent a considerable amount of time on when I redid the USMC OOB was vehicle/aircraft/landingcraft carry capacity and the weights of vehicles and helos.

The (more-or-less) default weight of an M1 Abrams is 45-50.
The (more-or-less) default carry capacity of a C-130 is 255.
So in WinSPMBT a C-130 can carry an M1 Abrams ...

When I redid the USMC I made most tanks weigh 55 and limited the carry capacity of anything but large landing craft (LCM-8, LST) to X54 so this could not happen. But a CH-53 can carry a LAV, but not an LVT/AAV ... etc. etc. etc.
To go thru and revise all the OOBs would be a not-so-minor nightmare.

[jp10]

Thanks, I only need two of the 14 planes to carry vehicles so i changed the carry weight from 255 to 164 and was able to squeeze a few more paratroopers in. I still had to trim some of the squads down but the real unit was at 75% so it is nicely close to the real numbers.