I've been thinking.
AH seems to be moving towards providing groundpounders with a lot of hardware, but not with stuff to shoot at.
Sure, we have the field structures and some vehicles, but where are the trains, trucks and miscelaneous targets like bridges, railcrossings and such? I mean, there were P47 Fighter Groups in WW2 that destroyed in excess of 2000 train cars. Here are some ideas of mine for stuff to shoot at on the ground. Some are stationary, and some are mobile, but need some kind of system to move along, such as a road or railway.
Staionary targets:
Radar stations. These might actually represent a tactical or even strategic target, disabling dot radar coverage in a certain area.
Fuel Dumps. I find the single refinery each country has to be a fairly unpopular target as it is now, since it's very hard to get at, except with strategic bombers. Why not also have small dumps spread around that affect a smaller area?
Ammunition Dumps. Same thing as a fuel dump, for ammo.
Railway Crossings/Road Bridges. This might be a little more difficult to handle in the sense of strategic importance, since their destruction would affect the smooth running of mobile units. This is something even hardcore strategy games find hard to handle.
Uncommanded mobile units:
Trains. The lifeblood of any WW2 army was the train system. Trains could carry massive amounts of hardware and munitions fast and effectively, accross any terrain providing tracks. For example the german Abwher reconstructed the entire Russian train system to accomodate it's wider track system.
Truck convoys. Supplies were redistributed from train depots using trucks. Both the US Army and the IJA used their versions of the 2 1/2 ton truck. The german Abwehr also used horses to a great degree.
In both of the abovementioned cases mannable guns could be employed in the same fashion as the fleet guns we have now. How the destruction of these vehicles would affect the warfare is up to the masters at HTC of course. It might be imagined that it would have some limited effect on ammo or fuel supplies at a base.
Commanded mobile units:
M3 versions. The US Army used a whole bunch of different versions of the M3 Halftrack. We have the M16 AA and the M3 Troop carrier, but several others were used. One of those that I think we could use is the T-19 with it's 105mm AT Gun/Howitzer.
M4 Sherman. I think it might be interesting to see the sherman in AH, considering we already have a german same-era tank. Also might be fun to have the M-10 Wolverine (with the english 17pdr) tank destroyer version.
M41 Gorilla. This was a howitzer mounted on the M26 Pershing Chassis. This vehicle was actually produced in advance of the Pershing itself. It's 155mm shells had a range of ca 12 miles. It was also fitted in some cases with the 105mm Howitzer.
Now we just need forests and rivers, and we're set for ww2ol :-)
I know AH is primarily an air combat sim, but what is to prevent us from seeing these fun toys also?
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1st Lt. Hogni "Darling" Gylfason
332nd FG "Flying Mongrels"143rd Pursuit Wing
[This message has been edited by darling (edited 05-30-2001).]
