Tactical Transport Development
Hello Commanders!
Actually, hang on just a minute, I need to hop in this helo to ride out to the front. Or wait, was it the truck to the far flank? Hold up, let me check my plan.
What Are We Modeling?
In all seriousness though, transport plans are an incredibly complex thing. One of the biggest challenges is creating a system that gives players the versatility to do weird, wacky things but which also has the simplicity to be understood. Let’s start with a reference look at what the Pros use when they are planning this stuff.
Figure 1: What the Pros use to plan these things
Well… that’s a lot. How can we make that easier for players to fill out quickly? Fortunately, some of that is pretty easy. Players don’t have control over individual squads, so the game will handle which squad or vehicle gets carried by whichever vehicle is most appropriate. And while timings are important, in general in our game everything is done ASAP. So the units need to know the timings, but the player just needs to know that the units will do things without delay.
Another thing we can do is to break this up a bit. The table above is for what is called a Lift, which is the plan for all the units involved and will take the different units to multiple locations from multiple locations. We’ve broken this down into the players only needing to plan a single Serial at a time. A Serial has a single, specific pickup location and a single, specific drop-off location. With those changes in mind let us see what we have left.
What Did We End Up With?
Figure 2: Sample Plan
This is a pretty simple plan as all things go, but it serves as a good example for looking at the various elements at your fingertips. The top section is pretty similar to the Air Movement Table above, showing us which transport unit is carrying which passengers. Below that we can see the path the transport will take, where it’s going to pick up the passengers and where it will drop them off. I have utilized the ability to set six waypoints to have the transport helicopter do some exfil as well. In the next section we can see which units have been attached as escort duty to this plan. Issuing this plan will give the respective orders to all of our units involved.
Escorts and Transports will move in formation with each other, great for keeping your transports under the protection of any escorts and avoiding having your troops arrive one at a time where they can be easily be picked off. If you already saw our pre-release stream then you know these plans can involve many more units of course, but in case you didn’t and want to check it out:
Ok, Now Show Me Crazy
Now, I think it’s great being able to do this sort of thing. But I promised you versatility, didn’t I? So let’s see what that can look like.
Figure 3: Now it gets weird
Since it’s probably not immediately obvious, let me explain the madness I have concocted here. We have a transport unit consisting of a couple of Chinook helicopters. Inside each of those Chinooks is a platoon of America’s brave men and some friends. But the transport mission those Chinooks are going to undertake is to go pick up a couple of Kiowa helicopters. How are they going to do that? Well the Kiowas will get sling-loaded underneath the Chinooks. Now that’s a bit strange, but why stop there? If you’re not familiar with the Kiowa, on the outside of it are a couple of benches that Joe Smith and a few buddies can ride on. So while the Kiowa is getting strapped in we’ve got a couple of mortar teams lashing themselves to the side of these Kiowas. Why are they riding the Kiowas instead of the Chinooks? I don’t know, I guess they just want to feel the wind in their hair. Or maybe it’s ‘cuz I told them to for this arbitrary example.
Alright, you probably don’t want to do that, but what might you actually use this for? You could use this for transporting some wheeled units with some infantry that can use the wheeled transport to sneak close to an objective or observation point. With any luck we can expand this to cover other transport types like amphibious landings in future updates and content.
Let The Good Times Roll (Or Fly)
There are a lot of nuances that Tactical Transport lets us utilize and explore in the game. An entire new range of possible scenarios we can develop and add to the game as we continue to support it and expand the series in the future. For any wily users who want to make their own scenarios or even edit the unit data the potential here is immense. If you’re as excited as I am about this, post your favorite picture of an unlikely military transport in action. Here’s mine:
Figure 4: Ok, so the chopper isn't being carried, but it's still funny.