USA/USAF Units in USMC OOB

[Suhiir]

I was thinking along the lines of creating two OOB's.
Western (NATO) Bombers
Eastern (Warsaw Pact & Asia) Bombers
That should free up 5-15 unit slots per OOB.
Bombers really aren't used much except by the occasional scenario designer.

[Basileus Ioannis]

that's what I do on my custom OOBs, transplant all the air units first to clear up room to move units around so I can see how much room is left for air. I used to use one of the "unused" OOB numbers, but now they're all used for active nations or for R&D use, so I've had to improvise. the only problem game-wise is, nationalities determine names/ranks, so if you look up these air units on your org chart, you might see odd name/rank match-ups for your nationality. the allies button seems to use names and ranks for that nationality number, and not the active player's nationality

for #12 USA, the alternative would be to suck all the naval gunfire/transport/amphibs over to #13 USMC, which would free up some room for air; then segregate Army and AF onto #12, and Navy and MC onto #13. then you still have the paradox of airstrikes being led by Lieutenants with Sergeants as wingmen. solution: make airstrikes a Company formation type, with a single aircraft, and subformation of one aircraft as a Platoon; this will make Captains leading Lieutenants on airstrikes

but this leaves the Navy problem...and outside of burning up a whole Nationality just for the Navy (for each Nationality that has an active Navy, that could be a lot of Nationalities!), I can't see how we can incorporate naval ranks. if money/effort/time were not a factor, recoding to incorporate a branch of service flag and making separate rank lists for each branch of service could be done, but that's heavy on the PITA and light on ROI. I recommend the new airstrike formations and leaving it at that

John

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I have to agree with all this. I pushed hard in the Jets/Planes and other Threads real hard with Don. As I found out yes it would be a major project just to do what I thought would "thin the herd" in the OOBs. It's not simply a matter of deleting units and there would be 300-400 units (Small countries keep theirs for many reasons.) to deleted from the OOBs, Campaigns and Scenarios, software and other technical issues are involved as well. Don and Andy are well aware of this issue. And I know from my position only, Don winces every time I submit a relevant piece of equipment to the USA OOB because we know there's only ~27 open slots left there without allowing for what I submitted this year along with others to include Don as well. However about a year ago Don did post that Andy and him are working on solutions to the OOB slot issue. We can only hope.

Regards,
Pat

[Mustang]

Place them in the UN OOB. Also air transports, tank transporters and any other rarely used equipment.

Ideally there would be a common OOB for generic units like bulldozers and ammo dumps that everyone can buy from.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by -Luc-

Hi,

I dont know if I understand well but... I think to have a special OOB for important army aviation (US/RU/GB/FR) is a good idea.

It could free a lot of spaces for groud units.

It could (Allies system) create some interesting possibilities.

I dont know if its possible and it will need a lot of work but the idea is not bad.

Thank you,

-Luc-

The idea has been tossed around a few times.

A couple of the "problems" are:
A) New(er) players might not know to look in the "Air" OOB or how to purchase units from it.
B) Every scenario using aircraft would need to be updated.

[Basileus Ioannis]

roger that, Suhiir. I appreciate all the work the team does to make our baby more enjoyable and realistic. if the team ever finds the time to comb through the scenarios and campaigns yet again, I plead that #12 units be sorted in some sort of unit class order concurrently. it's a bear finding template units scattered all over a list with units in no particular order

regarding increasing the number of units beyond 999, I remember how liberated I felt when we went beyond 255. still, if there was some way to have multiple iterations for each unit, say unit 008A for an M4A3E8 with medium tank loadout, 008B for an M4A3E8 with close support tank loadout, 008C as obsolete tank, etc., then from the unit selection menu, by picking unit 008, you can cycle through all the different iterations for that unit without tying up unit slots (got the idea from how digital cable TV channels work). this would also cut down on hunting through the entire list for multiple entries for the same unit in differing roles/weapons loadouts, like fighter-bombers and rifle squads. by arranging units in an array of say 255 units with 15 sub-units, it would leave room for expansion (3825 iterations in all). perhaps this is an idea more appropriate for the post-2020 project, if the team is already contemplating going beyond?

John

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Basileus Ioannis

... still, if there was some way to have multiple iterations for each unit, say unit 008A for an M4A3E8 with medium tank loadout, 008B for an M4A3E8 with close support tank loadout, 008C as obsolete tank, etc., ...

John

That's some of what I did with my USMC OOB variant (at least the MBT vs CS variant).
It was possible ONLY because the OOB was no where near as filled as say the US Army or Russian.

And now my variant is very close to filled so when the official patches come out I often have to move units I've created when the official patch uses a previosly unused unit number for something.

[Mustang]

AFAIK very few scenarios use level bombers.

This game will be around for a while still, I think it's worth it to create the Air/UN OOB.

It just seems like it would be so much better if hardcoded restrictions were somehow lifted and you could add thousands of units. There is no need to limit memory use like this on any computer made after 1995.

[DRG]

If all the level bombers were taken out of all the winSPMBT OOB's it would "save" 319 slots or, on average 3.5 slots per OOB. In the case of the US OOB it would "save" 20 slots and Russia would "save" 13. In the case of the current "official" USMC OOB.... 9 slots

There are currently 17 open slots left in the US OOB. Removing all the bombers would bring it to 37 which *I* consider ( they guy who would do the actual work ) to be a relatively insignificant increase for the amount of work involved in setting up a new OOB and moving 319 bombers into it so this is a dead idea that does not require further flogging

As for "if hardcoded restrictions were somehow lifted and you could add thousands of units"......... after eliminating all the smartassed answers what I'm left with is..... if it was that easy we would have done it by now. The entire.... and I mean ENTIRE, structure of save games and sceanrios would change rendering all existing save games, scenarios, unreadable to the "expanded" game. This is HARDLY a trivial thing.



Don

[Mustang]

Thanks for information on the hardcoded restrictions. Does sound more difficult than I had thought. Sorry if I get needlessly smartassed on these things.

But I can move the bombers into another OOB myself with the team's permission. I can see the problem in the rest of the OOBs, but I can move 20 bombers out of the US and 13 out of Russia into another OOB, like the UN. If there is any more room left I can move as many other bombers as you'd like into the UN OOB as well.

I can't edit the source code to create a new OOB and make it show up in-game, because as a non-programmer I'm not ready for that. But IMHO shifting the bombers out of US/Russia is a good idea in principle, these are major armies and frequently used armies and I'm willling to make it so they benefit from more slots.