Armoured trains

[Gud]

Yeah, here comes my pet obsession.

I'd love to see armoured trains in the game someday. Fair enough, a number of you will rise your eyebrows and go "wtf ?", which is a bit understable as this particular weapon was never really popular in the West, let alone USA.

However, the more East you go, the more important the "railway tanks" become. They were used a lot, in particular when they were not in danger of air attacks.

I realize that coding them so they move along railways would be a bit too much, however perhaps having a few extra unit classes so that we can make individual carriages/wagons/drasines and deploy them in player-made scenarios/campaigns ? Pretty phleeze )))))

[thatguy96]

You could easily do this with unused tank classes. I think someone had previously suggested that it would be fine so long as you and your opponents agreed to only move them along rail hexes and the like.

[narwan]

A number of new ways to use waypoints have been developed recently (by Pyros in particular; see the Kalpaki scenario for example) which MAY allow units under AI control to follow fixed movement paths. There's plenty of room though for the movement to veer off course somewhat so it will be tricky (and maybe impossible) to keep the 'train' moving solely on the railway tracks.
It will need a lot of work (testing in particular) for this to work in a scenario. If someone wants to put the effort in and try to find ways to make it work (which isn't garantueed to succeed btw) for a specific scenario it would be very interesting indeed.
But don't expect trains to make an appearance as regular features of the game. There are simply too many obstacles to overcome within the existing limitations of the code.

For PBEM games it can work, except off course when movement is under AI control, for example when a unit retreats due to suppression. The train could then move off the tracks. You can minimise this risk by making sure that the railway runs straight east to west; that'll increase the chance that the train will retreat along the path of the railway track but it is still possible it'll retreat in another direction (especially with multiple enemy units nearby).

Another trick would be to put impassable terrain along the railway track so the train can't move into those hexes. Unfortunately the same will apply to most other units too (vehicles especially) so this will limit the trick to use for set-ups and scenario's with infantry and few vehicles.

Narwan

[Helm]

I'd love to see armoured trains TBH but can see how the limitations of the AI could screw it up though

[MarkSheppard]

Or you could have the armored trains be "immobilized" on the track, representing them stopping to offload infantry and fire on partisans.

[DRG]

You are NOT going to see armoured trains. This is getting a little old as it's brought up each time we release and we give the same answer over and over and over.

As for.........."perhaps having a few extra unit classes ". We have the maximum allowed number of unit classes in both games. There will be no new ones now or ever.

Don

[PatG]

narwan said:
<snip>
Another trick would be to put impassable terrain along the railway track so the train can't move into those hexes. Unfortunately the same will apply to most other units too (vehicles especially) so this will limit the trick to use for set-ups and scenario's with infantry and few vehicles.

Narwan

I realize this will never happen but what could be used is:

1) a unit class "Rail"
2) a clone of the clear terrain that is IMpassable ONLY to class Rail units. - call it right-of-way
3) As Narwan suggests, lay right-of-way terrain along either side of the tracks and voila - a corridor restricting train movement.
4) Figure out some way to make a train move as a unit rather than as a collection of independant cars.

Again I do not expect the development team has the time or energy to pursue this and I express my eternal gratitude for their excellent work and patience with ever demanding users like me.

As a nasty hack, base the trains on boat units and use rivers for rails....

[PatG]

I was going to look into replacing the river shp file with the rail shp file and mess about with boats as trains to see what would happen. Thinking some more, I realized that if I posted anything like that here, I would be risking Don showing up at my door with a big stick and a nasty temper.

While picking blackberries (a task only marginally less painful than crossing barbed wire), I thought of another possibility:

If supported by the code, take the existing tramway and rail terrains and make them passable to units of class 197 river craft or similar while keeping their existing characteristics. Trains would then be based on this unit class. Problems would arise with river based units "sailing up the tracks" and with unit placement - trains on the water etc. For player generated scenarios these problems could be overcome by avoiding rails over water - the AI would be a different matter and any terrain passibility change would affect the game as a whole.

[PatG]

I think I've got it - or 75% of it anyway.

To refine my post above:

1) If supported by the code, take the existing tramway and rail terrains and make them passable by unit class 0 - Fortifications.

2) Make all other terrain impassable by unit class 0.

3) Base all trains on class 0 base units. The user will assign a move as required.

Units can be placed on terrain they cannot move through.

Since all AI usable class 0 units have move 0, there will not be any problems with unit placement or trains sailing up the river.

remaining problems:
1) controlling heading.
2) keeping trains together as units.
3) sound is not the best but I can live with it.

Any comments?

[Starmyth]

Hmmm. I'm not liking the concept of Panzertrains.