amphibious landings

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toonces
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amphibious landings

Post by toonces » 2009-05-31 23:26:50

Hey guys,
I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this. Just be clear though, there's no way to do a true amphibious landing from a ship in Falcon, right? The only way to do it is to place ground troops on the coast as reinforcements at some time?

I have an idea of trying to model an opposed landing of troops, with the arrival of the troops dependent on the ship reaching a port, but I don't know if it's possible to do this in the campaign engine.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-01 02:42:06

i think the amphibious landing code is not complete since falcon4.0 release.
the only way to simulate such op is [reinforcement]. place reinforcement ships near a coast, and ground units on the coast land. btw there's an objective named " beachhead"..seems related to such op.. God knows how it work..may be ship can move and dock there, as a port docking slot.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by molnibalage » 2009-06-01 09:03:24

In AF as I can remember this works.
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Re: amphibious landings

Post by derStef » 2009-06-01 10:07:46

toonces wrote: The only way to do it is to place ground troops on the coast as reinforcements at some time?
thats also the way i handle it in Taiwan.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by toonces » 2009-06-01 15:57:16

I ran a handful of experiments in FF4 with negative results.

First, I created a "beach" objective, pri 10, supply 100. I created an amphib naval group offshore, destination the beach obj.
I created a brigade->battalion, and also a single battalion with no brigade. Made them co-located with the amphib. group.

I tried a couple of different things, none of which really affected the ground troops to make them associated with the ships. The most promising to me was assigning the batt as "cargo" in the flags. I assigned them a target of the beach. On the Naval screen, I made the "cargo ID" the ID of the batt. This should have assigned the batt as cargo to the ships, but it didn't work.

The ground units just sit in the water while the amphibs happily drive right up to the beach obj.

I re-did it using a cargo ship instead of an amphib, and it's crashing the campaign.

So, while I can't say I exhausted every way of doing this, I can certainly believe that the amphib code is incomplete. Ah well...

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by DoctorX » 2009-06-18 00:58:01

Here's a trick...

Add a division or two of Airborne units and task them to capture several of the objectives at the beachhead you want to land at (At least 3 linked objectives). Also make sure to add a squadron or two of transport helos to ferry the Airborne units from where you have placed them to their objectives.

Then add your invasion forces at those objectives, set them to inactive and give them a reinforcement time of at least 12 or so hours after the Airborne unit's reinforcement time. If the Airborne assault is successful, the landing party will then begin to spawn at the beach – simulating an actual beach landing.

By doing this, the Airborne units have to capture and hold the beach in order for the invasion force to "land", since reinforcement units will not spawn at objectives that they do not control.

You could also add some ships to spawn off the beach with the same reinforcement time as the landing force, just to make it look like the invasion force came from those ships.

If you have the campaigns I created for RV a few months ago, take a look at how I did this in "Northern Typhoon". All of the DPRK Airborne units are tasked to capture certain objectives in and around the city of Taean, and then there is a division of Marine unit reinforcements that are the landing force at Taean.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-18 01:46:57

hmm.. the trick sounds reasonable.. and a bit more complex than ours.

my last try is" set some objs belong to invasion side directly, and put inactive armour units near those beachead objs as reinforcement ".. not successful. Yours add "airmobile units and helo" before the acitiviation of true marine landing force. i'll fire up your campaign and check that event later.

btw - do you remember if the marine forces can move forward as a part of ground offensive, or just stay at beachhead?

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by DoctorX » 2009-06-18 03:37:44

In my tests, the Marine units did actively engage in the war. They moved inland and captured Seosan airbase and started making headway towards Seoul before the blue side finally took out the last of them. I only had one division of 5 brigades as the landing force - if it had been a larger force it could have turned into a serious problem for the blue side with Seoul being attacked simultaneously from the north and south.

Also, I didn't necessarily have to make the landing force Marine units. Theoretically, the technique should work for any type of ground unit as the landing force (Haven't actually tested another type though).


Of course - the Marines didn't always get a chance to do their job in all of my tests. About half the time the Airborne units had to abort (the helos will "jettison" them if they are engaged). You only get one chance with each Airborne unit. If they don't succeed with their mission the first time, the campaign engine re-tasks them.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-18 10:28:23

i checked your North Typhoon campaign..

- first, i notice mi8 choppers do the airmbile job at 1300, day 1. many helo are downed by blue air, and they dropped their cargo- airmobile troops immediately.. most of the troops are drowned in water :lol:

- few helo are successfully dropped their troops on land, and i Witness the two ground units move to capture Taean! :shock: i checked the goals of the two units, they seems tasked to capture Seoul. BUT the two airmobile units are immediately wiped out by blue ground force! the other two more units, which are dropped too close to coast, and look like half-drowned, became immobilized forevere. As the helo base is disabled by blue air, no more helo flight generated after 1900, day 1.

- so, i confirmed- airmobile part is working. i still not witness marine unit activiated yet.

now questions..

- as i said, if i set Taean and few more objs owned by red from the start, can marine unit activaited on time without helo/airmobile units operation?

- do you have any experience/trick about.. have helo/airmobile units do the operaiton from a carrier? say, airmobile troops on carrier, like flighter squadron?

Edit - wait, i saw two red marine units show up on Taean town on day 2! tho the two units tend to retreat to coast, not move into offensive. From blue side i saw several infantry are guarding seosan AFB.. maybe marine units knew they are too weak to be offensive?

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by molnibalage » 2009-06-18 12:08:59

DoctorX wrote:Here's a trick...

Add a division or two of Airborne units and task them to capture several of the objectives at the beachhead you want to land at (At least 3 linked objectives). Also make sure to add a squadron or two of transport helos to ferry the Airborne units from where you have placed them to their objectives.

Then add your invasion forces at those objectives, set them to inactive and give them a reinforcement time of at least 12 or so hours after the Airborne unit's reinforcement time. If the Airborne assault is successful, the landing party will then begin to spawn at the beach – simulating an actual beach landing.

By doing this, the Airborne units have to capture and hold the beach in order for the invasion force to "land", since reinforcement units will not spawn at objectives that they do not control.

You could also add some ships to spawn off the beach with the same reinforcement time as the landing force, just to make it look like the invasion force came from those ships.

If you have the campaigns I created for RV a few months ago, take a look at how I did this in "Northern Typhoon". All of the DPRK Airborne units are tasked to capture certain objectives in and around the city of Taean, and then there is a division of Marine unit reinforcements that are the landing force at Taean.
I don't understand the method. Do I have to create manually mission using Tacedit? How should I use helos? This is not clear to me.

AI does few airborne mission on both side but never drops any airborne units behind the FLOT. Will be good if AI can create mission like that using An-2 and Mi-8s. In this case we should make very small battalions to keeping the realism factor.
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Re: amphibious landings

Post by toonces » 2009-06-18 12:45:08

@ Molni: I sounds it is a single mission created in Tacedit. You can do this by creating a one time flight- I can't remember the nomenclature now, I think it's create package.

@ DoctorX: Thanks for the tips, they will definitely open up some sneaky ways to edit campaigns.

My intent, though, wasn't to find a work around for an amphibious landing; it was to actually do an amphibious landing. The campaign idea, for example, would be a Europe campaign centered around a US amphib group trying to land troops somewhere with the blue side tasking to protect the group all the way through transit through landing, and the red tasking to sink the amphib group and oppose the landing. The idea was to create a naval campaign centered on blue CV ops, not the actual capture of land objectives although the ulitmate victory conditions would be to capture something.

If I use your method, I skip the whole fun of the idea which was to conduct a safe CV transit to amphib landing. Think Red Storm Rising.

In looking at the items in tacedit, I think I agree with whoever said that the amphib code was left incomplete. We had some interesting discussions over at FF about incomplete code. All the options appear to be there to create a land force associated with landing craft; it just doesn't seem to work.

But I could be wrong.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-18 12:52:55

PS: i re-checked my post about Dr X 's campaigns..

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=21668

in the report of north typhoon test...
Both sides got some reinforcement- sometimes a small scale ambush by red army, at the flank of west coast. A10 and AH64 did good job to nail them. .. and now i have 3 sq of A10!!
now i know it's a simulated amphibious landing!!

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-18 14:09:31

Again i check North Typhoon campaign..

first, i disable Seosan AFB by destorying its runway! to stop blue flights from shooting down red helo flights.

then, i run at 64x, watch the war running..

- Red helo/Mi-8 starts airmobilization on Day 1, 1315.. without blue interception, red helo launches 10 more flights and drop 10-12 airborne troop units around Taean area!! 8-) some units rushing to east, and blue units rushing to engage.

- on Day 2 0100, three red marine unit shows up in Taean 8-) and soon turn offensive, move east to engage blue units! their move is quite aggressive!!

ps- before Red helo do airmoblization, i NOTICE campaign AI sent a flight of mi-24 to disable a radar station near Taean! wow.. smart move..disable the radar, then start the air moblization operation!

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by molnibalage » 2009-06-18 18:09:41

Ok guys, as I see you understand what doctorx did. I still don't understand. In this case I have a request. When I finished my new campaign(s) I need help to improve the amphibious and airbore part for the new camapign(s).
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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-19 01:17:12

A bit off topic.. i tried to make " air-mobile op " from a carrier..

- i add one carrier unit, one UH-1 sq to the carrier. then add an airborne AK47 unit to the exact coordinate of carrier.. well, NO GO. the AK47 unit won't aboard the ship- because it's not a sq type item, so no "base ID" flag.
therefore the AK47 unit.. just stay in water and won't move with the fleet! :shock:

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by DoctorX » 2009-06-27 20:51:22

ccc wrote:- as i said, if i set Taean and few more objs owned by red from the start, can marine unit activaited on time without helo/airmobile units operation?
This would work, but you must also set at least two other objectives that are directly linked to Taean as red also or else it will automatically be recaptured by the blue side when the campaign starts - even if there are no blue forces in the area.

Also, if too much time elapses before the red side reinforcements show up, blue ground troops may move in and recapture the objectives themselves.
ccc wrote:- do you have any experience/trick about.. have helo/airmobile units do the operaiton from a carrier? say, airmobile troops on carrier, like flighter squadron?
I have tried this, but never had any luck. As you noted in a later post, it seems that when you try to base ground units on a carrier they just drown in the ocean. You could possibly have a helo squadron based stationed on the carrier (never tried that), but the ground units always have to be located on a dry land objective.



From my tests and experiments with airborne units, this is what I have discovered:

- Airborne units, like any ground units, must be located on land.
- Transport helos are the only vehicles that can transport troops (not possible with ships or cargo planes or APC's).
- Airborne units are the only ground units that can be ferried by helo.
- When an airborne unit spawns (either at the start of a campaign or reinf), any helo squads that are capable of moving troops will automatically be tasked to ferry the troops to their objective.
- If a helo ferrying troops feels threatened or comes under attack it will drop the troops where ever it is (even over water).
- Airborne troops can be given an initial task and objective - however whether they carry out the task is unreliable. They seem to try to reach their objective once (and only once). If they fail - the campaign engine will automatically assign them a new task.
- Once (and if) the Airborne units capture their objective they will usually be immediately re-tasked and ferried away. They cannot be relied upon to stay and hold the initial objective.
- If there are no helo squadrons that have the range to get from their base, to the pick-up point for the Airborne units, and then to the Airborne units assigned objective, the Airborne units will not carry out their assigned objective. They will be assigned to do something else by the campaign engine.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by DoctorX » 2009-06-27 21:07:54

molnibalage wrote:I don't understand the method. Do I have to create manually mission using Tacedit? How should I use helos? This is not clear to me.

AI does few airborne mission on both side but never drops any airborne units behind the FLOT. Will be good if AI can create mission like that using An-2 and Mi-8s. In this case we should make very small battalions to keeping the realism factor.
Hopefully what I said above clears this up for you. You don't have to set any actual flights or packages for the helos. As long as they are there and capable of transporting troops (which seems to be if the squadron has a high "TAC" role score in F4browse), and the helos have the range to make the trip, they will automatically be assigned missions to transport the Airborne troops by the ATO.

To explicitly give the Airborne units an initial task, assign them an objective and orders (such as "capture") in the ground page for the battalion, and in the unit properties page give them the unit flags for "Assigned" and "Ordered". If you assign them an objective on the other side of the FLOT they will try to reach it. Left to their own devices, the GTM usually just assigns them objectives near the FLOT.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by DoctorX » 2009-06-27 21:15:38

toonces wrote:My intent, though, wasn't to find a work around for an amphibious landing; it was to actually do an amphibious landing. The campaign idea, for example, would be a Europe campaign centered around a US amphib group trying to land troops somewhere with the blue side tasking to protect the group all the way through transit through landing, and the red tasking to sink the amphib group and oppose the landing. The idea was to create a naval campaign centered on blue CV ops, not the actual capture of land objectives although the ulitmate victory conditions would be to capture something.
This is exactly what I was trying to do when I came up with this "fake" way of doing it. :wink: I wanted to create a WWII reinactment with the Europe theater using modern aircraft and equipment.

Unfortunately, you are correct that the code is not implemented to do it the "real" way. I have never found a way or workaround to get naval units or cargo planes to ferry ground units, nor has anyone else that I've talked to about it. Transport helos are the only vehicles capable of picking up troops and moving them to another location.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by ccc » 2009-06-28 13:25:51

Excellent tips :D

thanx Dr.X !! if possible, maybe you can make some campaigns for Aegean theater? :wink: btw.. i'd like to see campaigns with more airmobile operation, or a much larger scale amphibious operation!

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by toonces » 2009-06-28 22:07:01

Yep, thanks for the info.

I suppose I'll just work within the limits imposed by the sim. Not much else I can do. Your info will help alot with that.

@ccc, we can't develop any campaigns for Aegean (or anywhere else) for FF5 until they finish the DB, if I understand Hustler properly. Of course, if Dr. X works on OF or AF, then that's a different matter.

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Re: amphibious landings

Post by derStef » 2009-07-07 15:06:32

Great imput Dr.X! too sad that i have not contacted you even earlier to join in here! cheers!
DoctorX wrote:
From my tests and experiments with airborne units, this is what I have discovered:

- Airborne units, like any ground units, must be located on land.
TRUE.

- Transport helos are the only vehicles that can transport troops (not possible with ships or cargo planes or APC's).
also C-130H can transport troops(airassault batallions) ..maybe aslo other Cargo planes. i think it has to do with the TAC role in f4browse..

- Airborne units are the only ground units that can be ferried by helo.
questionable. i think you can also ferry other units but i think just from one airport to an other, and not into a "free" or enemy area..

- When an airborne unit spawns (either at the start of a campaign or reinf), any helo squads that are capable of moving troops will automatically be tasked to ferry the troops to their objective.
Yes. - If a helo ferrying troops feels threatened or comes under attack it will drop the troops where ever it is (even over water).
seems so. my exp is also that, sometimes the helos are ferrying troops away from frontline! that is bad!

- Airborne troops can be given an initial task and objective - however whether they carry out the task is unreliable. They seem to try to reach their objective once (and only once). If they fail - the campaign engine will automatically assign them a new task.
Yes.- Once (and if) the Airborne units capture their objective they will usually be immediately re-tasked and ferried away. They cannot be relied upon to stay and hold the initial objective.
- If there are no helo squadrons that have the range to get from their base, to the pick-up point for the Airborne units, and then to the Airborne units assigned objective, the Airborne units will not carry out their assigned objective. They will be assigned to do something else by the campaign engine.
Yes

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