Paratroopers with 0 ORG after drop

[Gort11]

Yeah, I think I'd like to see paratroopers being a very useful capability to have, but requiring a lot of planes to move. And probably Command Points to actually use them. And for all that investment you get three elite infantry divisions that you can drop on say, Iwo Jima or Malta and have a solid chance of taking it assuming proper support.

 

[Moishe Greenblatt]

Dont you need air superiority to paradrop? I mean how is the Axis getting air superiority in N. Africa?! Last I checked there is a airport on the suez side of El Alamein, in addition to Malta and Cyprus---and its the RAF, I mean they should have planes everywhere.

You have to build more and better planes than the Allies and you have to build more and larger air bases and radar in order to paradrop. Or, do something somewhere else which causes them to move their fighters somewhere else for a few days then you can drop. Such as deploying massive amounts of fighters and naval bombers around Britain to interrupt shipping so they move their fighters to stop you from killing their convoys then you can quickly move your fighters back to Egypt and paradrop.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's certainly not 0 percent, rather something like 5-10 percent. Oftentimes i drop them accidentally on top of some relocated division and they can hold out until other paras from neighbouring provinces with some regained org help them out. Relocation also cuts org so it evens the field. If you drop them on top of entrenched divisions with full org it's obviously a quick loss.

If they're constructed a certain way they can win outright on drop and force the target division out of the province. Not a good to rely on that since they're insta-gibbed if they fail, but it can happen.

Paradropping a line is safer; failed drops don't die immediately if they have a valid retreat province, they instead go to that province. Large simultaneous paradrops can be pretty disruptive.

 

[kettyo]

If they're constructed a certain way they can win outright on drop and force the target division out of the province. Not a good to rely on that since they're insta-gibbed if they fail, but it can happen.

Paradropping a line is safer; failed drops don't die immediately if they have a valid retreat province, they instead go to that province. Large simultaneous paradrops can be pretty disruptive.

I always drop in a line to have retreat ground or a helping hand against relocated units.

What template you use for them which can break units right after dropping?

 

[IDGBIA]

In WtT they are changing special forces to be more combat effective but limited to a percentage of your total force so hopefuly the buffs from this outweigh the downside of not being able to mix in artillery and paratroopers can maybe be useful in a non cheese way

 

[safe-keeper]

I'm not sure if paratroopers are represented all that well ingame, for what they achieved historically.

If we look at the airborne landings for D-Day, and Operation Market Garden, then, the scale of those operations is much smaller than what can be done ingame - to transport the troops for Market Garden, 3 airborne divisions, took so much of the air transport capacity of the Allies, that they couldn't do it in one lift.

For D-Day, if we look at the map scale of the provinces, the paratroopers weren't dropping in the province south of the beach, they were landing on the beach province. But if you do that ingame - dropping onto entrenched enemy units, then the paratroopers will generally fare poorly.
For Market Garden, the action takes place over what looks like just 3 provinces on the map. And again, it doesn't really represent the airborne divisions landing in fields some distance from the defended objectives.

I'm also not sure about how much organisation they lose paradropping, and the penalty to organisation regain. It makes them very easy to defeat for 5 days, which is longer than a lot of airborne operations lasted historically. And their higher organisation compared to normal infantry, makes them superior at holding a defensive position after a period of not having parachuted. Which might help represent the 101st Airborne's defence of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, but does also seem a bit counter-intuitive at times.Yes, 70% air superiority, in all air zones from the source airfield to the drop zone.

So maybe if players had the ability to drop paratroopers directly into an enemy non-city province, and instead of a battle happening, the enemy had a chance of being disrupted or have infrastructure or whatever destroyed? Then there could be a PP cost of carrying out this kind of "Airborne commando raid", and the paras would also be lost if the province wasn't captured within x time?

 

[billcorr]

Terrain might affect organization of a parachute regiment upon landing.

For example:

Plains no effect
Desert no effect
Hills -x10% organization
Urban -x15% organization
Forest -x20% organization
Jungle -x30% organization
Marsh -x40% organization
Mountain -x60% organization

But here is the conundrum:

Each province in Europe is approximately 60 to - 100 km long per side.

Are there places on Earth there is absolutely no place to paradrop divisions? There might be.

Even though a province is jungle, for example, wouldn't there be clear drop zones somewhere in that piece of territory? The effect of terrain might be different in a Grand Strategy Game vs a tactical game.

Perhaps an additional modifier could be factored in:

Combat width. Larger combat width airborne units suffer more disorganization upon landing. Takes more effort for the unit to get its act together upon landing.

Just brainstorming here.

What are your thoughts about terrain's effect on organization (and maybe manpower and equipment loss, too) on a para-unit?

 

[billcorr]

Terrain might affect organization of a parachute regiment upon landing.

Weather and illumination would have an effect on a parachuting unit's organization, manpower, and equipment, too.

 

[IDGBIA]

I just realised the new airdrop supply system means you dont necessarily have to capture a port on paradrops anymore to have supply so maybe that will make it a lot my viable

 

[dasaard200]

The USA has this problem in just getting to a 'front-line' airport; Oceans, troops have to ride a boat for 1-3 months, land, reach an airfield, and hopefully their DC-3s have the space to park while seasick troops wander to the assembly point .
The dinky range given to transports doesn't help much when you have maybe a second airfield that can reach a mutual target .

 

[Cpt. Fabri]

Using the words of an actual officer experienced in paratrooper warfare from WW2 during Market Garden: "I know very well than a paratrooper unit is at is most vulnerable moment when it lands."

In the context of the inital phases of the operation, when the germans knew they had to start harassing the allies asap.