Submarines

[Alinestra Covelia]

Is there any way to prevent a sub from carrying missiles? I'm making a modern day scenario and I'd like to have a sleek small ship-hunting sub and a nuclear missile platform.

Also, how many nukes can a sub carry? I had a city full of about 20 nukes and a sub, and when the sub left port, all 20 nukes went with it!

[techumseh]

In FW, the submarine flag does 3 things: it makes the unit invisible to most other units, it allows the unit to carry missile units, and it prevents the unit from attacking units on land. The maximun number of missile units that can be carried is 8, so I don't know what happened to allow yours to carry twenty.

There's no way in FW to have one effect and not the others. In Test of Time there is a separate flag for invisibility. It is possible in FW to make a unit permanently invisible by leaving the graphic blank (no picture) and by manipulating the markers which control the location of the shield. Check out Mike Jesenka's "Sword of Shannara" to see how he did it. Hint: do NOT use the built-in editor to do this, use an external graphics program like Paintshop Pro.

[jcarkey]

No, subs can carry 20 air units. What the sub flag does is it sets carries air units to allow only missles. I think that carriers can carry 20 air units. The sub flag also sets it to be invisible to most units and to prevent it from attacking land units. I am sure of the subs can carry 20 missles. I'm not sure if carriers can carry 20 air units. But maybe since I was using MGE that that changes things.

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What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what its all about?

Contact me at cpoland@mail.win.org

[Alinestra Covelia]

Also when I have a sub in the middle of the ocean and I land Nukes on it, they all land happily, ending their turn.

When I activate the sub, there are 20 units on the square moving with it!

[SandMonkey]

carriers can hold 20 units, i had to use them in one game, and i had so many planes that they were landing on the carrier, then when i moved the carrier they were asleep over the ocean.

[zyxpsilon]

quote: Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia on 11-25-2000 07:24 PM Also when I have a sub in the middle of the ocean and I land Nukes on it, they all land happily, ending their turn. When I activate the sub, there are 20 units on the square moving with it!

Here's a "tricky" way ...
Change the ICON of, say, Battleship to a Submarine.
What do you get? Something to think about, wouldn't you agree?
Meaning, the unit's ability is NOT modified but what the player actually sees IS a sub. Kind'a weird, too!
But, it solves the dilemna of carrying missiles instead of planes or ground units.


Enjoy!

[techumseh]

Well, I'll be damned! You think you know something. For all these years, I just assumed that subs and carriers had the same capacity limits as transports.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Looks like that's what I'm going to have to do. And also perhaps give the submarine a high movement rate so that when it gets found by air units, etc, it stands a chance of getting away safely...

A far from perfect solution, but much better than having a player load 20 nukes on to a Hunter Destroyer sub.

[Gothmog]

Removing the invisible flag is probably the best solution here considering that your subs aren't invisible to the AI anyway.

[jcarkey]

techumseh, I thought it was 8 until I played one game where I had 8+ units on my carrier. I think that the manual and/or poster says that subs and carriers can hold 8 units.

------------------
What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what its all about?

Contact me at cpoland@mail.win.org

[Alinestra Covelia]

I was planning on making this scenario multiplayer, and then taking my brother on at it. So invisibility would be nice.

[jcarkey]

Well, then I think you'll have to suffer and have it as a house rule not to put missles on subs. I'm assuming you can trust your brother.

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What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what its all about?

Save the whales, collect the whole set!!

[Alinestra Covelia]

No, I can't trust my brother. He was the one who got into a big fight with me and then seized my pillow and farted on it to spite me.

Imagine his dismay, then, when I pulled *my* pillow out from under the bed. Imagine the expression as he looked down at *his* tainted pillow!

Ah, me. Nothing like sixteen years of juvenile humor to keep a brother and sister together...

Returning to the point, I have taken a suggestion made by a friend via email, and you might find this useful:

The Submarine automatically carries missiles, cannot attack onto land or air, and cannot be seen by many ships.

If you put the "transport" flag on it as well as calling it a submarine, then it switches from carrying missiles to carrying land units instead. If you then switch the hold to be 1, it can only carry 1 land unit. This doesn't solve the problem entirely, but it does go a pretty decent way to stop missile sneaking!

Many thanks to my friend for pointing this out - if he then provides me with his pseudonym, I will give him more anonymously precise credit!

[jcarkey]

Why don't you just make the hold to zero?

This is a mean trick. You should be sure that during the game you are the host so you can pick first. Pick any country. Have an event that gives you a nuke every turn after 1700 AD. That would make up for all of the pranks.

------------------
What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what its all about?

Save the whales, collect the whole set!!

If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented the spell check- Dan Quayle

[Kull]

My compliments to your friend, Alinestra. That sounds like a very elegant solution. A few things to consider, though:

1) Modern nuclear hunter-killer subs all carry cruise missiles. Only the relatively primitive diesel boats operated by second tier countries still rely purely on torpedos.

2) If you give a transport-flagged sub to your AI civs, I'm not sure they'll use it properly. You'll need to pay close attention to that during playtesting.