Paratroopers

[Marquis]

Last night in our game Germany got Paratroopers but not until mid-game.  By then they didn’t have any bombers so to use the Paratroopers they had to build some, they built 2, spending almost an entire turns worth or production.  This production would have been beter spent on infantry and tanks.  The paratroopers did take an undefended Norway and Finland, which divered two Russian tanks but otherwsie were not overly effective.  Ceratinly, the tech came to late to consider a drop onto London - and that’s the real issue, you can’t plan for tech.  You can spend a ton of money trying to “get” a roll on the chart then it’s random.  A strategy based on “getting” a tech will almost allways fail.

Now if Germany we lucky and got paratroopters early say on turn 1 or 2 then built around using them, then maybe they’d get lucky again and take London but that’s needing allot of luck.

[Baine171]

I must agree that a bomber filled with paratroopers also has a pay load of bombs too.

Me and my co-players think that a bomber can’t attack when filled with paratroopers.
4 me it justifies the whole infantry issue. If a whole bomber SQUADRON (unit) is filled with men and the bombers can’t attack. If U want an attacking bomber with paratroopers build extra bombers. Or attack with whatever remaining aircraft U have.

This way all the Bumbers can go cryin to mommy that they can’t win the game by just buying bombers. :cry:

[hakan]

@Greand:

Germany might take London with it. If you go for a strat using bombers and hope for
paratroopers, its not that unlikely to take London as if you get paratroopers at a lukcy point London might be very poorly defended.

… After reading all this I am rally thinking that it might be better to play without the tech… I hate loosing because of a dominant tech. And this technology seems poorer than most tech - even worse than Rockets and Havy Bombers.

Taking London with only fallschirmjägers or Berlin with only paratroopers is just impossible in my eyes. Rangers are to light equipped and would be out of supply in a short while. In my eyes, being a real Jäger, it seems difficult to coordinate such a massive drop, and total suicide to carry out an infantry assault on a capital without massive heavy equipment like artillery and panzer.

A&A is not a detailed game, and shouldn’t be, but one does not have to make it totally unrealistic…

Is it possible to modify the rules a little bit? Perhaps:

1. Bombers who transport paratroopers cannot participate in the battle (JU52, DC-3).
2. Paratroopers is a separate unit that must be built after the research breakthrough (one may mark paratroopers with a tip-ex dot). After the drop, paratroopers act as any Infantry unit. 1/2/1 at a cost of 5 IPC.

[HannibalSW]

I really enjoy the paratrooper technology.  It seems people cry game breaking when something strays the game so far from the standard moves each country should be able to make.  I think Germany and Russia trading land while Germany tries to wait for Japan to creep up behind Russia can get redundant.  With technology people can break from that mold.  Like FMG said, it makes the game dynamic.  This of course is from my view of the game as a mere mortal who plays with brothers and cousins.  They never really get to play much or frequent the forums.  So sometimes we are left with some really weird scenarios that rarely follow what a country’s player “should” do.

[Jennifer]

This is why I have been saying for months now the most powerful technology in the game are Paratroopers!  No other technology allows you to threaten such a wide area of the board without moving your units from your capitol; nor to immediately add a significant amount of cannon fodder to a major attack, nor to snipe National Objectives by picking up undefended territories around the board, and upgrade the technology multiple times with other technologies! (Long Range Aircraft + Heavy Bombers + Paratroopers = Ungodly Power!)

This is not to say that it’s unbalanced or broken though!  The allies can get defenses against these bombers just like against Heavy Bombers and Jet Fighters, etc…we call it Radar.    The allies can also just defend their territories better and go slower if they have too, or they can get their own paratroopers and return the favor.  (I am of course, assuming it’s Germany that gets Paratroopers for the purposes of this discussion, it could be Italy or Russia or someone else, I’m just limiting my discussion to Germany since it applies equally well to all nations and reduces the amount of typing by 5/6ths.)

Paratroopers also have a severe limitation of only being usable during combat and forcing you to pick up infantry from the same territory your bomber is currently located in.  (Also the inability to SBR which was discussed previously and thus not discussed again.)  That prevents you from dropping reinforcements on the front lines and restricts your ability to move copious quantities of infantry into combat at a time.  After all, Germany, at maximum production (ie with Improved Production Technology) can only produce 12 Infantry in Germany per round.  So if you have 48 Bombers in Germany at the end of your round and 144 IPC to spend (the amount needed to build 48 Infantry), you’d still only have 12 Infantry that could be dropped as paratroopers because the other 36 bombers could not move to other territories, pick up units, and drop them.

Also, it’s beneficial to your opponent that paratroopers can only drop infantry.  At least the counter attacks are easier.  And of course, as alluded to before, AA Guns and Radar shoot down the paratrooper AND the bomber when they hit so the person with paratroopers technology has to account for that in his figures. (So far the Anniversary Dice Calculator does not account for paratroopers, as far as I know.)

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But yes, I do believe of all the technologies in the game, Paratroopers are the most powerful.  Paratroopers + Long Range Aircraft is more powerful still and Paratroopers + Long Range Aircraft + Heavy Bombers is game over for the side that does not have the three combined, IMHO.

[gamerman01]

@Cmdr:

But yes, I do believe of all the technologies in the game, Paratroopers are the most powerful.  Paratroopers + Long Range Aircraft is more powerful still and Paratroopers + Long Range Aircraft + Heavy Bombers is game over for the side that does not have the three combined, IMHO.

An over-generalization, I think.

I’ve developed long range heavy bombin’ paratroopers (2 hit heavies - before they neutered them) with Japan and still lost.  I didn’t complete the tri-fecta until after Germany had fallen, and it was too little, too late.  We played it out, though, because the long range heavy bombin’ paratroopers made it interesting.  Sure, you can get the infantry to odd places, but you can’t always land the bomber in a safe place.  And you can’t get to all the islands as easily as you might think.

Paratroopers can be awesome, but they can also be not so awesome.  It is not always the best tech for your country to get.  Many times, mech infantry or rockets are better (for chart 1) and long range aircraft is often better.  It depends on what country you have, and what units you own, and what round it is, and what the board situation is.  The fact remains, you can’t do more than one thing with a unit at once.  If you’re dropping infantry (only allowed on the front lines, and only allowed during combat movement) then your bomber is not SBRing, it is not attacking naval units, and it may not end up in the optimal place as a result of the attack.  To be sure, long range heavy bombing paratroopers is still an issue, which I have addressed in another thread.  Some house rules have been proposed by various players, including only allowing one capability per bomber each turn (take your pick - long range, heavy bomber, or paratrooper), and increasing the cost of bombers by 1 IPC for each tech obtained (maximum 15).  While these are reasonable “remedies” I’ve never used them.  Both sides have equal chance to get these techs, and both can benefit roughly the same.  The game is for fun, and one side is going to lose one way or another, so why not have the possibility of getting long range heavy bombing paratroopers?  It makes it more fun and enticing to invest in tech.  And like Jen pointed out - radar is a nice defense for them.  It will shoot down 1/3 of your bombers and paratroopers, whether they’re long range and heavy bombers or not!