Lets Talk Paratroopers!

IL, you wouldn’t need limitations on how many paratoopers you can buy if they were realistic and 0-1 units

you have not given one reason they should be 1-2 excpet that that is the way OOB

and also why are paratoopers able to retreat in airborne assaults, that is not realistic at all.

well, hopefully the paratoopers have a range of only 2 and they attack at 0 after their 3 or less, so the captial thing really ins’t an issue.

also it is much harder for airborne to retreat so when they airborne assault they should have the same retreat rules as an amphibious landing.

Market Garden was the largest airborne operations in history or something like that so that attack would be represent by at least 3 paratooper units.
So when you make airborne units 1-2 really your saying 10,000 men with rifles and submachineguns has the same combat power as  50,000-150,000 men with armored vehicles and heavy weapons

Has this debate gone in full circle?  I’ll just cast my vote w/ IL.

My personal peeve is w/ the AA50 rule that bombers can attack w/ paratroopers.  I feel this tech should be renamed “gliders.”

Synopsis on my Proposes Paratrooper Rules

All bombers can be “retrofitted” as transport aircraft.  Instead of attacking on their own, they may carry 1 “non-vehicle land unit.”

If the player develops Gliders, the bomber may “tow” an additional infantry, truck, or artillery independent of whether it is a standard bomber or a retrofitted bomber.  Heavy bombers may tow a 3-3 tank.

All para-dropped units get a +1 modified opening fire hit.  Otherwise, they attack normally.

@Upside-down_Turtle:

Has this debate gone in full circle?  I’ll just cast my vote w/ IL.

My personal peeve is w/ the AA50 rule that bombers can attack w/ paratroopers.  I feel this tech should be renamed “gliders.”

Synopsis on my Proposes Paratrooper Rules

All bombers can be “retrofitted” as transport aircraft.  Instead of attacking on their own, they may carry 1 “non-vehicle land unit.”

If the player develops Gliders, the bomber may “tow” an additional infantry, truck, or artillery independent of whether it is a standard bomber or a retrofitted bomber.  Heavy bombers may tow a 3-3 tank.

All para-dropped units get a +1 modified opening fire hit.  Otherwise, they attack normally.

these idea’s have nothing to do with world war 2

@Imperious:

well its not important who agrees with whom, but rather to find some more decent ideas because the OOB is too vanilla.

my idea is the most decent

speaking of new ideas, I think I’ll start threads for all the other new FMG pieces

Here’s a thought, my apologies if you went down this road already, i have missed some of the discussion and tried to catch up but might have missed something.

What if Paratroopers didn’t have bonus attack power, that’s what all the AA games have given them, but as IL mentioned, they didn’t really carry bonus firepower with them, it came from catching the defenders off-guard, so what if they could disrupt the enemy defense power?  Because they were mainly troops lightly armed for speed, their goal was to slip in and take bridges, cut power and phone lines, even take control of airfields and such to disrupt counter-attacks.

So instead of them firing at a 2 or 3 for the first round only, why couldn’t they roll for the disruption of enemy units.  Say they roll for a 1 or 2 and hit, then the defender’s units defend at -1 for the first round due to paratrooper disruption.  This gives your landing or attacking group extra help without creating a paradox of p-trooper firepower.

Questions?
  -how many defending troops should be affected?  -could be based on the 1 (affects 2 or 3) or 2 (affects 3-5)  This way multiple paratroopers could affect larger groups.  1 p-trooper should probably not affect 8 INF and 4 ARM on the beaches, but 3-4 ptroopers could.  Maybe ptroopers could choose which units where disrupted too.

So what would ptroops values be?
  -maybe that of normal INF,  a/d-1/2, m/c-1/3 still.

on the side note, the AA50 rule for bombers to both attack and drop Paratroops is my opinion bogus.  maybe loaded bombers did carry troops at the same time in towing gliders but the last thing I’d want is a fully loaded bomber carrying live munitions and strapped to 100 guys behind.  something goes wrong….boom!  too many letters to moms…

@Imperious:

Say they roll for a 1 or 2 and hit, then the defender’s units defend at -1 for the first round due to paratrooper disruption.

So do they kill a unit now or disrupt it and reduce its combat effectiveness?

Secondly, if its #2 how do they ever kill units?

my thought would be that they roll to disrupt multiple units, then they roll with the rest of the attack force and would attack as normal INF.

So, #2 to disrupt, and they also roll to kill units.

i don’t follow, how does that mean they can’t be dropped independantly?  My thought was that they actually help the entire attack force, considering they usually were dropped in concert with additional attackers.

if they were dropped on an island by themselves, they would roll to disrupt the defenders, on say a 3 or less, which would mean that the defenders if 2 INF and 1 ART would all 3 defend on a 1.  Then the Paratroops would attack as normal and the defenders would also.

If the ptroops attacked at a 3 for the 1st round they’d likely get a hit.  if they attacked preemptively at 2 they have a decent chance.  if they attack as normal INF they have the least chance, yes, BUT… if they were attacking with other troops at the same time it would actually be the defenders who have only a small chance of getting a hit.

Even if I got a preemptive strike with ptroops, I wouldn’t attack on that particular island with just them.  May not be the best example, but a possibility.  I think about Sicily–There were more than twice as many Axis troops defending as Allied attacking and Patton’s paratroops went it first, I don’t remember hearing much in the way of what they destroyed so much as how they disrupted the Axis counter attack the next day by being forward enough to call in naval bombardment and such to take out tank columns coming to Gela.

I suppose if they were disrupting at 3 or less, if they rolled a one, they could destroy something too, but it seems that often the idea of bettering units is to +1  them, seems like ptroops could be a good time to -1 something, give them a varied roll. 
Aaaahh, i just looked at the OOB rules, and ptroops only gives bombers the ability to carry INF, they get no bonus, so I must have said something confusing earlier, my bad.
  my thought was to use the new INF as ptroops, give them the same ability as OOB, but add that they can also have a negative effect on defenders.   Still, if it’s not a great idea, it was just an idea, just trying to contribute and all…

on the side of upping ptroops attack I’d be in favor of it in addition to lowering defenders, but for set time limit, for a whole battle may be too powerful.

Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to reply to this thread recently.

For the most part I am about 95% in agreement with IL.

Paratrooper were shock troops and not commando.  I agreed with a 2 or 3 attack value for the first round only to represent suprise/shock value and possibly reduce those units before a counter attack like a sub.  After that they operate as standard infantry.

Sorry ET, an attack value of “0” is simply a non-starter with me.  I appreciate your passionate argument but I feel it simply would not make the unit playable in A&A.  I think IL has made several excellent arguments as to why this won’t work.

One idea that I might entertain is that when AB units operate on their own, they have a defense value of 1 against armor.  But when operating with standard infantry unit, they operate as normal infantry.  However, this means creating a way to be able to identify AB units through out the game, such as a marker or a special AB piece.

I also like Lucky Days idea of reducing the enemy’s ability to counter attack (for the first round only)

I do not agree with paratroopers being able to selectively eliminate any particular unit.  This would disrupt the balance of play in AA.

I strongly disagree with using any aircraft pieces to transport AB unit.  In my opinion, the extra cost for AB units is so that they use an airborne attack without using other aircraft.  Ideally, if we had a transport aircraft that could be purchase.  This would solve all movement issue and prevent over buying of such unit.

@Black:

I appreciate your passionate argument

your welcome

and yes the main thing is the quiet obvious fact that airborne soldiers are not transported by bombers.

Out of curiosity.  If there were an air transport aircraft what do you think the value and stats should be?

Here is my idea.

IPC  10
Att  0
Def  0
Range 4 (maybe 6?)

Can carry 1 infantry or 1 artillery.

Can deliver 1 infantry for airborne assault.

i dont like units that dont kill things, you should just pay to do airborne attacks, then put a little chip under paratoopers to show they are equipped for an airborne assault