kamikaze unit

[Juggernaut]

i think a kamikaze plane would be a cool special unit for the japanese. could only be produced under nationalist gov.

[ContradictioN]

Yeah that would be good

how much destruction does it cause for a plane to fly into a ship?

If it manages to destroy it completely, or sink it, then building the plane needs disadvantages to keep the balance

two suggestions: the citizen could become upset? or there is a 50/50 chance the plane will not hit the ship, or won't hit an area of the ship that causes much damage?


I think it would add a lot of fun and tense to the game too

"Oh crap, a kamikaze!?"

yep I like it

[SerapisIV]

So, in other words, a cheap cruise missile

I'm not a big fan of the idea of unique civs or units either way. Just sounds a bit presumptious/racist to me.

[DarkCloud]

I am against this as a seperate unit... however it could be a good option for All Air Units to "Crash" or "Fight" when they 'bump into' an enemy.

[marcuspeddle]

Human Torpedo

Has anyone ever heard of the 'human torpedo'? It was used by the Japanese during WWII. I came across this at the Japanese War Shrine website and then did an Internet search to find more information. It was basically a big torpedo with a place for a pilot built into it. The pilot had to lie down, of course. I can't remember how they were launched, though. From a ship? I think that must have been it. A man who was training to pilot one of these things wrote his memoirs and he talked about how he prepared himself psychologically for the final mission. One after the other his friends got in these things and were shot towrds targets. Luckily for him the war ended before he had to take his turn. I also read that the British and some other European countries were using a human torpedo but it wasn't made for suicide missions like the Japanese version. A couple of soldiers would sit on top of this 'torpedo' (the picture I saw had people sitting on top. I don't know if there was a model people could get into) and sneak up on ships to plant explosives. I read one story about how the British captured an Italian (I think) crew after they had planted bombs. While the ship's officers were talking to the prisoners one of the Italians said, "By the way, there's a bomb on this ship and it's going to explode very soon." BOOM! Too late. I read that a lot of these torpedo guys got nailed on their missions.

[Rasputin]

hopefully not all units ever used throughout history will be added to civ 3, it would become too cumbersome

[Urban Ranger]

Suicidal units are not regular units per se. Those Japanese kamikaze pilots were no more than kids with a few hours of flight training. Any country with the right mind will not generate suicidal units. It's only in a place such as WWII Japan where the population was so thoroughly brainwashed could this happen. Japanese soldiers and even civilians were told to kill themselves to avoid capture. This shows what kind of crackpots were running that government.

[Juggernaut]

Any country with the right mind will not generate suicidal units. It's only in a place such as WWII Japan where the population was so thoroughly brainwashed could this happen

as mentioned before, the productions of these units WOULD require a nationalistic government. And under nationalism, a lot of people gets brainwashed.

a really cool thing would be to use these units on special targets. If a foreign civ is about to finish a wonder, you may just send some kamikaze´s to the city, select "try to hit city improvement" and then "wonder under production" or something. Haha, this would be awesome.

[Rasputin]

i like the idea of trying to destroy the wonder being built

[ancient]

why not just launch the torpedo with out the man strapped on?

[Juggernaut]

cause the kamikaze´s are cooler. beside´s there has to be some positive sides with kamikazes, or else the japanes wouldn´t have used them.

[marcuspeddle]

Originally posted by ancient
why not just launch the torpedo with out the man strapped on?

Are you referring to the European torpedos? Maybe it could get into a shipyard easily without being noticed and let the crew sabatoge specific ships. It was the same for the Japanese torpedo. The pilot would steer the torpedo to some specific target. It was a kind of stealth weapon.

[Adm.Naismith]

Re: Human Torpedo

Originally posted by Anatolia
I read one story about how the British captured an Italian (I think) crew after they had planted bombs. While the ship's officers were talking to the prisoners one of the Italians said, "By the way, there's a bomb on this ship and it's going to explode very soon." BOOM! Too late. I read that a lot of these torpedo guys got nailed on their missions.

OFF TOPIC
There was a special corps in Italy, during WWII (but with some roots on WWI missions, too).
The main weapon was called SLC (Siluro a Lenta Corsa) roughly translated as "Slow Run Torpedo", but nicknamed "pig".

It was deployed near enough to the target by others ships or specially equipped submarines.
The two people crew of subs (frog men) had the mission to drive the SLC to the enemy harbour, avoid patrolling ships, cut or avoid protective net usually put to defense the ships by common torpedo and reach the target.
They disembark from the SLC, mined the enemy ship using magnetic mines (secondary weapons they had), then detach the "nose" of the SLC that was full of explosive and fixed it to the skull of the main target (usually a battleship or cruiser).
Their missions where usually heroic to said the least, and usually very difficult to achieve, but too few to change the war end.
Their main war succes was the attack of Alessandria of Egypt, where they damaged the battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth and two others ships.

The quote you mention is about that attack, when the italian sub De La Penne was captured and imprisoned on the battleship it had mined, to force him to tell where the mine was or die in the explosion. He waited until the last minute to speak to the british captain, saving himself, his comrade and the british crew from the direct blast. The ship sunked on the low harbour bottom, and was repaired after some months.
/OFF TOPIC

Yes, I agree we cannot reproduce any military unit of the past. Kamikaze by itself wasn't a succesful weapon, just a way to introduce "smart bombing" when precision bombs wheren't as available as determined and religius inspired pilots.

[Provost Harrison]

I remember reading about the Russian dogmine, where they trained a dog to run towards tanks and sit under them and then the bomb went off. Very effective idea, the dogs did exactly that, ran to the tank and blew up. However they were trained on Russian tanks, and destroyed Russian tanks, therefore totally and utterly shooting themselves in the foot!

[Rasputin]

damn smart dogs !! seems like they learnt too fast...