Interdiction missions?

[unmerged(171774)]

Thanks for your feedback Womble but the same thing happens with Ground attack missions, bringing me to the same point about what is the difference?
I don't understand why information like this is so top secret. Surely the programmers know what is happening, don't they? Why not put it in the tool tip, or in the manual.
I must confess I am beginning to believe it has been badly implemented/not finished, like so many other things in the game in a rush to get it out the door, and the only difference Is that the AI Will target moving units as a preference when set on Interdiction, and units in combat when set on ground attack. But if like me you don't trust the AI to do anything, and you target all your missions yourself using ground attack on a moving unit will have the same effect as using Interdiction.
I hope I'm wrong.

Both missions "stop" enemy movement no more than planes vs ground troops combat occurs (e.g. a couple of hours).

The difference is straight forward (see Paradox above) planes having ground attack mission will target troops in combat, planes with interdiction mission will target moving troops out of combat.

Obviously planes with 1 province area set as mission target will target ground troops in that province no matter of their status, cause planes have no choice.

BTW I have never seen AI using interdiction (runaway cratering, logistic bombing, installation strike) at all.

 

[loki100]

Sorry to belabour the point, but you're missing it.

An example (now I've got the game up and can refer to it...) to illustrate how splendid interdiction is.

I'm (still) Italy. It's autumn '40. I've pushed the French back off the Alps and past the Rhone while the Germans pile up their units in front of Paris. My attack is stalled because my units (largely infantry) are constantly bumping into routed French (and American Expeditionary) divisions and having to reorganise before slogging on to the next province. Though a desperate hail-Mary breakout pulls a lot of French attention away from their capital, I have to fall back behind the Rhone because I have no units ready to fight and broaden the breakthrough. All along, I've been ground attacking the heck out of the Schwerpunkt with my TACs and NAVs and, when I don't need then to maintain air superiority, my CAGs. But I've hardly encircled a single French Division, so there are as many units facing me now as there were when I repulsed their initial attempts to do a Hannibal, plus all the additional attention that getting to the borders of Orleans attracted.

Which I have now done, to significant effect. Pinning the Rhone Valley provinces down with a 3TAC, a 3NAV and usually a 2CAG allowed me to annihilate the French forces that faced me to the west and break all the way to Bordeaux. As my lead elements got to Poitiers and La Rochelle, and the region of Bourges, south of Paris, the Cheese-eaters reacted (part of the point: draw them off the defense of Paris) and the 3TAC stalled a Corps-strength advance in the region that contains St-Vaury for long enough for me to extricate units from around Bordeaux and form up in Bourgneuf, directly south of their forces in St-Vaury. That motorised 4-6 and its friends just behind it would have been cutting me in two if it weren't for the interdiction.

Interdiction can change a situation from 'fluid' to manageable like a snowflake on a beaker of supercooled water.

Just to say - I agree completely with this analysis, in my current Soviet game I've shifted my TAC bombers to a mix of logistical strikes and interdiction & it really pays off, but you need to keep at it for a while. The net effect is to 'isolate' portions of the front, so that neither reinforcements nor supply get there - in the end the effect far outweighs the impact of direct ground strikes.

 

[unmerged(131342)]

Yeah, logistical strike is really nice in Hoi3. I've used it to the same effect as you, very nice. Especially if you have some idea on how the supply lines likely flow.

 

[Onedreamer]

Thanks for your feedback Womble but the same thing happens with Ground attack missions, bringing me to the same point about what is the difference?

Like I already said: ground attack does lower both strength and organization, interdiction apparently not (only org). Since I almost never target areas but single provinces, I find ground attack more useful.

 

[DazKaz]

Like I already said: ground attack does lower both strength and organization, interdiction apparently not (only org). Since I almost never target areas but single provinces, I find ground attack more useful.

This is the kind of post that confuses me. When an interdiction mission ends in my game the end of mission bombing results, nearly always tell me x number of soldiers killed. If it only lowers ORG why is it reporting a STR reduction?

 

[DazKaz]

Both missions "stop" enemy movement no more than planes vs ground troops combat occurs (e.g. a couple of hours).

The difference is straight forward (see Paradox above) planes having ground attack mission will target troops in combat, planes with interdiction mission will target moving troops out of combat.

Obviously planes with 1 province area set as mission target will target ground troops in that province no matter of their status, cause planes have no choice.

BTW I have never seen AI using interdiction (runaway cratering, logistic bombing, installation strike) at all.

With this in mind, I'm guessing that if your aim is mainly interdiction then it would be better to split your air units into individual units rather than stacks of 2,3,4 etc because, the enemy would be delayed the same amount of time by one wing as they would by a stack of six?

 

[Forster]

If interdiction is operating properly, there should be a reduction in strength and org, although maybe not to the degree you would hope for. That is the purpose of interdiction, as well as the delaying factor. Sometimes bombs get drop causing soldiers and vehicles to scatter, but may not do much damage. Other times, units were severely damaged and combat effectiveness was affected. You would hope the game would try to model those effects.

 

[loki100]

If interdiction is operating properly, there should be a reduction in strength and org, although maybe not to the degree you would hope for. That is the purpose of interdiction, as well as the delaying factor. Sometimes bombs get drop causing soldiers and vehicles to scatter, but may not do much damage. Other times, units were severely damaged and combat effectiveness was affected. You would hope the game would try to model those effects.

Interdiction is now utterly different to HOI2, where if I remember it hit org and G/attack hit strength.

Interdiction causes no losses - what it does is to stop movement, so if you have a couple of air wings working a particular province, anything that tries to move through it will move very very slowly, as every time your bombers turn up, movement stops. So if you can identify a province the enemy needs to use, or a decent Infra province amongst others with lower infra (say around the Pripyet marshes) you can really screw up the enemy movement.

The effect, as CharlesLouis says above - is its key to a real blitzkrieg as it stops the enemy responding to your attacks with anything other than the troops immediately to hand.

In a different analogy its akin to the WW1 use of artillery to seal an area of enemy trenches off from supplies and reinforcement - that isolation was more important than any immediate damage.

 

[DazKaz]

Interdiction causes no losses - what it does is to stop movement, so if you have a couple of air wings working a particular province, anything that tries to move through it will move very very slowly, as every time your bombers turn up, movement stops.

In my game the end of mission bombing reports show losses. In the experiment I just done for example on an interdiction mission a stack of four TAC bombers did killed 202 personnel.
I'm still confused as to the exact effects, and I think most of you guys are too.
:rofl:

 

[Forster]

I guess Johan could enlighten us if he wants to.

 

[Daztek]

what happens when a bomber is ordered to interdict an area with only static units / units in combat?

does it ground attack (reduce strength) or interdict (reduce org)?

from observation it seems to reduce org . . .

generally interdiction as in HOI2, seems to be better for winning combats

 

[DazKaz]

Ok Iv'e run some tests:

five Tac Bombers V three stationary brigades of INF

0500 18 Jul 1943 to 1700 19 Jul 1943

Ground Attack: org 16.9 str 64.9 | org 3.3 str 51.3
Interdiction: org 16.9 str 64.9 | org 2.0 str 47.1

The fact that the interdiction suggests more damage is misleading I think as if I ran it again it would probably show different results. The only reason for the different figures at all is from random dice rolls on the bombing.

My conclusion is that there is no difference in the str or org loss between Interdiction and ground attack missions other than random events.
Unfortunately its a lot harder to test the effects on movement especially as my game never releases properly, and crashes to desktop every time forcing me to re start it which as you guys know takes for ever! About twice as long to load as any other game I have in-fact, and I have loads

 

[DazKaz]

I've just finished a test for movement speed while under effect of different bombing missions.

Test was run from 0900 22 July 1943, using five TAC bombers, when a division of three INF Brigades entered a hill province, to when it cleared the province heading west. I have no idea if it was strategically re deploying or moving normally. The different missions where run during the whole of the time the unit was in this province.

Time when clear of the province:

Under ground attack 1700 23 July 1943
Under interdiction 1700 23 July 1943
Under NO attack 1700 23 July 1943

If this is true interdiction has NO effect on movement.
Can anyone else do a test please to confirm these findings, in case I did something wrong?

 

[womble]

Obviously planes with 1 province area set as mission target will target ground troops in that province no matter of their status, cause planes have no choice.

Just another observation for the pot, but I've seen planes with single-province target Interdiction missions bomb troops that came under their bomb sights as they were heading to and from the province they were meant to be interdicting (which contained no troops in land combat)

 

[unmerged(131342)]

Just another observation for the pot, but I've seen planes with single-province target Interdiction missions bomb troops that came under their bomb sights as they were heading to and from the province they were meant to be interdicting (which contained no troops in land combat)

I have seen the same behavior with ground attack now that you mention it. Something seems wonky with the targetting algorithm...

 

[unmerged(38925)]

I think we should listen to the game developer and the in-game tool tip when they say that the only difference is in what province the AI decides to attack within the list you give it. (Combat vs. Non-Combat provinces)

 

[DazKaz]

I think we should listen to the game developer and the in-game tool tip when they say that the only difference is in what province the AI decides to attack within the list you give it. (Combat vs. Non-Combat provinces)

Unfortunately that is a very bad way to implement Interdiction. To have no delay element to it just makes me think it was yet another unfinished part of this game.
The whole point of Interdiction is to delay enemy troops

in·ter·dict (ntr-dkt)
tr.v. in·ter·dict·ed, in·ter·dict·ing, in·ter·dicts
1. To prohibit or place under an ecclesiastical or legal sanction.
2. To forbid or debar, especially authoritatively. See Synonyms at forbid.
3.
a. To cut or destroy (a line of communication) by firepower so as to halt an enemy's advance.
b. To confront and halt the activities, advance, or entry of: "the role of the FBI in interdicting spies attempting to pass US secrets to the Soviet Union" (Christian Science Monitor).
n. (ntr-dkt)

 

[loki100]

I've just finished a test for movement speed while under effect of different bombing missions.

Test was run from 0900 22 July 1943, using five TAC bombers, when a division of three INF Brigades entered a hill province, to when it cleared the province heading west. I have no idea if it was strategically re deploying or moving normally. The different missions where run during the whole of the time the unit was in this province.

Time when clear of the province:

Under ground attack 1700 23 July 1943
Under interdiction 1700 23 July 1943
Under NO attack 1700 23 July 1943

If this is true interdiction has NO effect on movement.
Can anyone else do a test please to confirm these findings, in case I did something wrong?

thanks for doing this - I'll see if I can isolate an example and compare (& share). I still see the green movement arrow disappear when my bombers are in a province on an interdiction mission ... hence my original belief in what is going on. I wonder if to be really effective you either need to work over a province with low IC or of the sort of size where small losses in speed actually accumulate to a recognisable outcome?

 

[DazKaz]

thanks for doing this - I'll see if I can isolate an example and compare (& share). I still see the green movement arrow disappear when my bombers are in a province on an interdiction mission ... hence my original belief in what is going on. I wonder if to be really effective you either need to work over a province with low IC or of the sort of size where small losses in speed actually accumulate to a recognisable outcome?

Personally I now believe it's just bad game design, or they never had time to implement it, and Interdiction has no effect at all on movement speed.
I look forward to your results though.
Thanks

 

[womble]

Unfortunately that is a very bad way to implement Interdiction. To have no delay element to it just makes me think it was yet another unfinished part of this game.
The whole point of Interdiction is to delay enemy troops

I can promise you that Interdiction does have a delay element to it; I've been taking advantage of it ever since I got told about it. Latest example is an Infantry division running from the Romanian province bordering Yugoslavia at the corner of Bulgaria into Bucaresti and Ploesti from the south (which is longer than coming into Bucaresti directly from the west and involves a couple of river crossings) in the time it took a Romanian HQ 2 provinces away from Ploesti to get to next to Ploesti. It just seems that GA does too. The delay might not be so observable when it's inflicted by a plane on GA missions though, because it will be attacking troops in combat, and the relationship between combat and movement is always variable.

I suspect if you send a GA mission to a rear area province/region, it'll have a similar effect on movement to an Interdiction mission. The difference will be in an environment with a mixture of moving and in-combat targets. If you set the planes to GA, they'll pick on troops in combat; Interdiction will pick on troops moving and not in combat first. They'll both do some of the other (I've seen Interdictors bombing combat provinces), I imagine, but have different priorities.

I only wish my interdictors wouldn't loiter over empty provinces quite so much when there are juicy material targets just adjacent.