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[E. Albright]

Well, for what it's worth, the airborne ops went worse than expected, but much better than I should have expected.The followup ops were facing more realistic expectations, but still weren't as amazing as I'd somehow dreamed they'd be. I'm not sure where I got my optimism about this harebrained idea. Well, I mean, I do, but I don't know why I got it.

For some reason, I was thinking attacked units couldn't retreat from air assaults (because the attackers can't, so naturally that'd mean defenders can't either, because, um... uh...), so the HQ would be readily wiped out. I did wipe it out, but only by sending the transport craft out to bomb the survivors after they retreated into open terrain... which means I can't use them next turn to extract the attackers. Ultimately, it looks like it'll mainly be a nuisance with no meaningful long-term impact that'll cost me all the troops I sent through the airbridge, but it should at least be a real nuisance. Inconsequential, with a limited amount of damage it could cause even if entirely ignored... but definitely a nuisance.

[EuchreJack]

Uh, why don't you just drop paratroopers behind enemy lines and cut the logistical lines?
That should fuck with the enemy if you do it a couple turns in a row.

Or maybe Nukes make such tactics obsolete.

[E. Albright]

I mostly don't b/c of how thick the skies are with cheap, reliable turboprop planes shooting big air-to-air missiles, and at this point also SAMs. This was me trying to be clever and attacking the northermost flank of the front where there's less thick interceptor coverage and no SAMs. I still lost 40 thopters during the air bridge.

On a related note, the large air strike that White Castle used to follow up their attacks on my troops after they routed them last turn may have gone better than it should have because someone - no names mentioned - might have deployed a wing of shiny new interceptors but forget to set them to actually, ya know, intercept...

[Il Palazzo]

For some reason, I was thinking attacked units couldn't retreat from air assaults

Wasn't this the case with your first airborne assault, somehow? At least that's how I remember it.

Inconsequential, with a limited amount of damage it could cause even if entirely ignored... but definitely a nuisance.

Well, there was another alright-ish commander in that HQ, so there's that.
Note taken about your new interceptors. I should have retired ye olde Aeroburghers long time ago anyway.

[Il Palazzo]

Uh, why don't you just drop paratroopers behind enemy lines and cut the logistical lines?
That should fuck with the enemy if you do it a couple turns in a row.

Mah dude, we're all terribly conscious here of such ideas lurking in the adversary's mind. And so we do all we can to disabuse one another from even trying.
The fringe areas are still relatively vulnerable, though.

[E. Albright]

For some reason, I was thinking attacked units couldn't retreat from air assaults

Wasn't this the case with your first airborne assault, somehow? At least that's how I remember it.

That's how I remembered it too. In retrospect, I think we're remembering it that way b/c the planes couldn't retreat. I sorta have a vague memory now that there were AA guns that did - though it's possible they were first-gen AA guns with envirosuits and just died instead.

[Il Palazzo]

Hey, I've noticed you somehow manage to form units with very little troops in them, that you then gradually reinforce. Or so it looks to me. How do you do it? The game won't allow me to create a unit for which I can't supply at least 50% nominal strength.
I might be just misreading what I'm seeing, though.

edit: wait, no, that's not true.  I can create e.g. a machinegun infantry brigade with only machine guns, which comes out to less than 50%. Is that what you're doing?

[E. Albright]

It was. However, since I'm using a more recent patch than you, I no longer can do it b/c it got fixed. Enjoy it while you can. :p

This was how I had a biker BDE, forex. Motorized infantry + 1000 bikes, recruit only bikes, manually add trucks & infantry to the HQ, then set bikes to elite and only "tolerate" anything below elite. That let me recruit a unit with a TOE manning of 15500 16000 with only 5500 6000 troops on hand.

You can still use this basic formula to maintain units, but you'll need to recruit at least half the total by including unwanted troops and then manually removing them to your SHQ. In this case, it'd be best to recruit exactly as many as you need to fill it out as replacements then use SHQ to fill so you can get away with the bare minimum.

[E. Albright]

Turn sent along. Hopefully whatever I overlooked this turn will be less dramatically ditzy than last turn's "leave front-line units in All-Out Attack posture", although I suppose publicly calling that esteemed tradition stupid risks earning me condemnation & censure from most of the major regimes on our planet.

[Karlito]

Quick turnaround from me, since it just happened to fall on a weekend.

[Il Palazzo]

For the last... forever, I've been hearing this tall tale about certain person's radioactives running out. And yet, still.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The easiness with which EA can just decide to wipe out three hexes' worth of assorted troops per turn is bonkers.

[Karlito]

For the last... forever, I've been hearing this tall tale about certain person's radioactives running out. And yet, still.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The easiness with which EA can just decide to wipe out three hexes' worth of assorted troops per turn is bonkers.

One mine is running low, though yet another with larger deposits is under construction

[Il Palazzo]

Oh, great. A thousand. That's what, 50 more hexes of defenders I'll need to write off.
And there's some metal nearby too. Let's hear again about there being no resources to dig up in all that territory.
 
On the other hand, kinda not far from a certain another somebody's borders. If only they went and did a thing. Eventually. Finally. If its not too much of a bother. >:-/


Continuing on how I'm supposedly finding more resources, I spy with my little eye some 90k fresh metal deposits in Bureaucrat land.


Do I get how artillery works right?: regular guns - basic or mechanized - do the stated numbers of attacks per combat round; so, artillery with 4 attacks and full 100 APs will do 4x10 rounds = 40 attacks per combat. Less if low on APs. Rockets, missiles, and nukes all deliver the stated number of attacks in one salvo, regardless of how many action points are there left.
So, by attack number alone (not attack power), regular artillery with its 4-ish may attack more times than a missile launcher with 15 or so, but it's contingent on APs left.
Just trying to figure out why ye olde howitzers seem to sometimes perform better than my Burgher Flingers (I should rename them Ham-arse). Which have been fucken shit at doing what I wanted them to do so far - although, in all honestly, the perception is most likely strongly coloured by how amazing nukes are.

In other news, my enterprising civilians keep building oil drills right in the most hotly irradiated spot on the very frontline. They want that oil, man! It's not even like the deposit is any good.

[E. Albright]

In my defense, I have not said one solitary thing about running out of radioactives since I found that deposit last turn. My first mine just ran dry, though.

The area where WC and the AG started is pretty short on minerals. In general, almost all the territory I captured the first 3/4s the game gave me nothing but water and oil. Only once I got further south (and to a lesser degree, east, which involved killing soooo many trogs and dinos, and I still haven't cleared some mountain ranges inside my borders) did I start finding metal (in a handful of really awful deposits) or radioactives (in two really good deposits).

You have the right of it with how artillery works. Another reason traditional artillery sometimes works better than the fancy stuff is b/c the traditional stuff can deteriorate the defenders' positions over the course of those 10 rounds, so if the targets don't retreat, they'll be in worse shape to resist the last volleys than the first. This match (and the SP experimentation it's necessitated) has been rather educational about how artillery in general works, though I've mostly only applied those lessons with atomics. And while the atomics are certainly nice, they have their limits, of which I'm painfully aware. If I wasn't respecting those limits, and was strictly shooting at the troops that I'd like to be killing, you'd be a lot less impressed with them.

[Il Palazzo]

I don't expect you'd want to be more forthcoming about the nuts and bolts of using atomics that you keep hinting at? Gonna let me learn it all by myself, aren't you?