Helicopters/Paratroops/Marines

[PresidentMike]

A few suggestions to make these units more powerful and/or useful.

Helicopters: iIf they can drop units in enemy territory, why can't they pick them up too? They would be much more useful if they had this ability.

Paratroopers: I've heard this idea before, and I liked it so much I'm going to promote it here. Paratroopers should work like marines, and have a special "airborne assault" that would allow them to drop directly onto enemy cities/units, perhaps also giving them a combat advantage.

Marines: This option could go under any of these units, but I'll insert it here. Marines & paratroopers should be allowed to move on the turn that they are landed/dropped. As it works now, if you drop paratroopers you must wait a turn before you can move them, and that takes away from their main advantage: surprise. Ditto for marines. It would be awesome if you could use them to attack, say, a radar station on a coastal position, then on the same turn withdraw them back to the ships. Helicopters should work the same way: the units you land in turn A should be able to move/attack in turn A, not turn B. This would be a strong advantage that would make these units and their unique traits much more useful.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

These ideas have all been suggested before, and they are all pretty good. One thing though, if you gave the paradrop units same-turn move ability, this would really be too much of an advantage to the player, you could go in and pillage all luxury/resource squares before the AI could respond, not very realistic.

I would like to see the direct attack onto tile option, though this would almost certainly be suicide on a city tile, it would be useful for dropping onto lightly defended radar towers and taking them out in preparation for the main attack, that would be MUCH more realistic.

As it is now, Paratroopers are almost useless, though you can drop several in forward areas as "sacrifice" units, which may save attacks on your mechanized units as they cross the border.

I posted a request in the units thread for a Modern Marine, I would give this and the standard Marine paradrop ability as well, and do away with paratroopers entirely. This would make Marines much more useful as general elite foot troops, and free up room on the tech tree for other units.

 

[Teabeard]

There should be some possibility Paratroopers will be intercepted and shot down. Maybe if enemy fighters are set to air superiority or there are enemy flak cannons nearby then this becomes dangerous?

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Yeah, good idea, I wish airlifts of any type had a chance of being shot down if they were moving to a city within air superiority radius of enemy fighters.

If the Paratroopers had a better defense it would make sense to drop a bunch in and one or two might survive until the next turn to complete the mission, even if they were still worthless as attack units. As it is, you can drop a bunch in and if the enemy is anywhere near parity with you the AI will simply kill every one with tanks or modern armor.

Being able to at least drop onto and take radar towers would make them somewhat useful. Hmm, I wonder how you would code them for taking enemy airfields, that's a good RL capability. If there is a ground unit, they must engage it - if they win, 1/2 the planes on the tile are destroyed, while the rest flee to the nearest city automatically. If there are fighters they get to strafe your paratroops once per unit, possibility of lethal bombard here, special case. Airfield is destroyed also.

 

[sir_schwick]

Instead of airfield being destroyed, its captured. Same goes for bunker/fortresses/barricades. This would make paratroopers perfect for bringing in planes.

 

[Jawz II]

i suggested the idea for chopper picking up units a while ago

i dont agree marines should do amphibious attack and then retreat back to the ships, would make them too powerful

but the other ideas are good

 

[rhialto]

I think air infantry and helicopters should be merged into a single chain...

paratroops - can airdrop out of a city
air cavalry - can airdrop out of a city or into a friendly city
special force - these guys should be a combined marines/paras unit
shadow force - advanced special force
rocket rangers - ok, we're getting into Teslerian science fantasy here, but you get the idea.

Paratroops should NOT be able to drop directly onto hostile forces - historical examples of this have resulted in the units being all but obliterated. Nor should they be able to move immediately - this gives the instant pillage abuse as an option. However, they should exert a civ2 zone of control (please bring this rule back onegai shimasu!), and messing up the enemy reinforcement options is where they should shine.

otoh, perhaps we could give paratroops an instant attack ability, but remove the
pillage ability from them.

 

[sir_schwick]

Theorhetically paratroopers would have a hard time pillaging if they are supposed ot be a light unit. But the instant attack would allow them to harass enemies. Agreed on ZOC, it made spreading out your forces more important. Maybe consider bringing back entire stack destruction, ro at least collateral damage from SMAC.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

One thing I liked about CTP was the limit of 9 units to a stack, it really changed tactics. There, though, any group of units could fight as an army. I would like to see maybe a stack limit of 20 for Civ, but once the number of units on a tile passed 10, collateral damage to the other units in the stack would become possible, increasing as the number approached 20.

I think that directly attacking a unit via paradrop is good, the instant attack ability would pretty much be the same as what I meant. Of course dropping directly onto an enemy while helpless in parachutes is suicide, what I would like modeled is the rapid deployment and assault capability. Instant attack from another square would serve as well. I would disallow any other movement, or pillage though. No city drops either.

IRL air cavalry can deploy from just about anywhere, they ARE in helis, after all. Rhialto, I think my Modern Marine would serve very well as an all purpose spec op unit. IRL, these guys do all kinds of stuff - paradrops, for one, amphibious assault, vertical helicopter insertion via rope, and even long range amphibious assaults from way offshore in hi-speed amphibious landing craft - that would be a neat ability in Civ, send these guys in to shore from a big amphibious troop carrier 3 to 4 tiles out.

 

[rhialto]

The reason I said air cavalry should limit their special move to only in or out of a friendly city is because otherwise they get relegated to simply being fast infantry with no special thought to interesting tactics. having a "teleport 5 tiles in any direction from anywhere to anywhere" removes some decision making.

I'd prefer to keep marines and paras as separate units in order to force a decision on players. "Build elite move anywhere do anything infantry? yes/no" is a no brainer, and is the kind of decision making best left out of strategy games. By the time you reach the tech to enable special forces, I merged them anyway, but those should be very late game units, and possibly limited production in some way.

Perhaps modern marines should have an extra flag to enable to "drop" from a transport ship to a land tile upto 3 tiles away? Hard call. Striclty speaking, having fast boats is more an attribute of the transport, which could just as easily be represented at civ scales by giving a late modern transport with a higher move rate.

Regarding paras, given the map scale, I changed my mind. Airdrops onto an occupied tile should be allowed with no penalty, with an instant attack (at no special penalty) in this case. This avoids using them to scout otherwise invisible territory, as was done in civ2 with paratroops.

 

[mortichro]

Paratroopers must be alittle bit more to offensive and very
more to defensive and less movements.. Paratroopers are suppose to take key points of the enemies positions... for example a Fortress or an airfield.. they must have a strong attack on fortified units and the same effects on smaller cities.. but paratroopers should have less attack points for larger cities which is too unreal for a paratrooper..

paratroopers defense point should be more vurnarable when the unit is fortified or in a fortress yet in a city.. maybe this movement will be good if there is an advace research about equipment control.. for all elite and offensive units like Marines, Paratroopers and Armour