Engineers

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 03 2005

Chaim wrote:Engineers fight well, so they are multi use, anyway if the devs create and airdropable engineer would be great for airborne operation, like Suez channel battle when airborne were dropped in the airport and airdroped engineers put the airport online and reinforces arrived by plane.

Didn't they just capture and reactivate an existing location? That is what special forces do...

Post by **George Geczy** » Sep 03 2005

szabfer wrote:I tried to upgrade a facility (a power plant, if I remember well) with and without engineers... there was no difference in the remaining days (estimated) of the upgrade.

The presense of engineers will not change the displayed "days remaining" - this is always shown as the 'no engineers' days count, the engineers will cause the project to complete faster than the estimate if they are present. As Chris mentioned, engineers can be moved, killed etc at any time, so it was decided to show the unassisted count instead. Could be argued either way.

Regarding air-droppable engineers - given the large equipment needs of modern engineer units, I'm not sure that they would be able to be deployed by para-drop into the field. If anyone has information to the contrary, please feel free to send along a link.

-- George.

bergsjaeger · Post by **bergsjaeger** » Sep 04 2005

u could always have a leg version of the engineers. not sure if that exist in real life. but u could paradrop that version.

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 04 2005

Making it leg does not address the equipment George mentioned.

Chaim · Post by **Chaim** » Sep 04 2005

Special forces do that? i didnÂ´t knew that, thanks

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 04 2005

Actually, anything can do that, as long as you capture a supply source the airstrip will repair and be usable. Special Forces are usually the best for this type of mission because they can be airdropped and fight a very long time before needing to resupply.

Chaim · Post by **Chaim** » Sep 04 2005

Nice idea, anyway two questions:
-Take a quite bit for any common Troop to sit and wait the strip to get ready, time is critical in any mission like Suez channel battle.
-I saw special forces are "equipped for demolition" what use this got?

szabfer · Post by **szabfer** » Sep 05 2005

Back on my issue: I started to build 2 hydroponic farms next to each other (supply level difference only 1%), and moved 6 engineers (captured from enemy previously) on the location of one hydroponic farm. Checked the complete percentage after 50 days... it was exactly the same for both, so it seems that engineers make no difference in construction speed for me. Any idea please?

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 05 2005

Supply levels also affect build times. I've used engineers many times and seen the benefit. If you want to prove it, save the game, then build with engineers. Reload and try without. You'll see it go faster with the engineers.

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 05 2005

Chaim wrote:-Take a quite bit for any common Troop to sit and wait the strip to get ready, time is critical in any mission like Suez channel battle.

Is there a question here?

Chaim wrote:-I saw special forces are "equipped for demolition" what use this got?

Just found a bug in this yesterday. Units equiped for demolition are supposed to allow destroying (as opposed to scrapping) in non-loyal territory. Currenlty only engineers allow this. We'll be fixing that. It will mean that you can drop special forces/rangers into rear lines and cause havoc destroying facilities.

Chaim · Post by **Chaim** » Sep 05 2005

Whom, that nice, this bug gonna be fixed in update 3? About the suez channel battle, let me give an example:

-I used two groups of 7 airborne droped on an airstrip, behind they i droped some farps, anti-air and artillery (all airdroped), back on my side, i had lot of C5 with non-airdropable troops waiting to land on the airfield and go to the battle (specially some At batts), if the game had some airdropable engineers (like garrison, low combat stat , 8 km/h maximum speed), i could have (on this case) a quicker speed to bring the airstrip on line (before the enemy send all his tanks to my poor airborne, like what happened in the example and i had to take all my a-10 from the front line to save the airborne).

Post by **Balthagor** » Sep 05 2005

I understand, but nobody has shown that airdroppable engineers are realistically possible. I realise it would be nice, but we don't want units that unbalance the game. Airdroppable engineers creates one unit with a lot of specialties.

(hoping to have the demolition equiped bug fixed for update #3, not sure since it was just found on Friday and we're trying to wrap things up...)

Draken · Post by **Draken** » Sep 05 2005

US Army Engineer Btn (Airborne) TO&E
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/uni ... 25L000.htm

Some US Army Engineer Btn (Airborne):

27th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Airborne)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... /27eng.htm

37th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Airborne)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... /37eng.htm

30th Engineer Battalion (Topographic) (Airborne)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... /30eng.htm

307th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Airborne)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 307eng.htm
http://www.bragg.army.mil/307ENG/

BATTALION MISSION

ON ORDER, THE 307TH ENGINEER BATTALION (AIRBORNE) DEPLOYS WORLDWIDE WITHIN 18 HOURS OF NOTIFICATION, EXECUTES A PARACHUTE ASSAULT TO CONDUCT ENGINEER COMBAT OPERATIONS TO SUPPORT THE 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION

(Sorry for the CAPS, I did a copy and paste from their home page)

Indeed, there are only a few airborne engineer btns, but they do exists.

I couldn't find data to support it but I imagine that they require quite a airlift capabilities and they are quite expensive to train, equipt and maintain.

Chaim · Post by **Chaim** » Sep 05 2005

As i said you can make those units slow moving, not amphibious, soft target, with low combat stats (aside good resistance).

Post by **George Geczy** » Sep 05 2005

Thanks pretty interesting, thanks for the info Draken.

Though there do not seem to be many of them, as you point out, they do exist, so we should add something of this sort.

I would tend to think:
- Leg Movement / Soft Target
- Not amphibious
- Supports construciton (ie no-supply build, construciton speedup)
- Demolition capable
- NOT a bridging unit (linked info indicates that they are capable of repairing bridges and such, but clearly in being air-dropped they would not have with them full pontoon bridging or other heavy equipment).

Chris and I will talk about this and see what we can add.

-- George.

PS - regarding the earlier comment about testing engineer build times and not seeing a difference - note that engineers affect the build time in their full Zone of Control (hex and surrounding hexes), so make sure you built your 'not engineer' test facility more than 1 hex away from the engineers.