Paratroopers 1.5

First, if paras only need 15 minutes delay, it would make them far too op (as their ability to land behind enemy lines is quite strong, so the long delay time is used to balance it). Second, the devs have already, or close to implementing, reduced the time from 15 hrs to 12 hrs. Third, you need to complain politely. No dev will listen if you word your complaint with such arrogance.

Paras are quite useless in general, but in specialized situations, they can prove to be quite useful. Time your landings. It would be best if you landed them while the enemy is sleeping and several hours away from the nearest army. No, I don't use them, but I'm saying they're not entirely useless.

Well thanks for the reply but my ire is this, where does it tell you how they work. It isnt arrogant to be annoyed. From someone who has pumped a lot of money into Bytro I have some reason and justification to be so. It is the lack of clear concise manual that irritates me.

If I was MD of this firm I would ensure that for each game type 1.0 and 1.5 there was access to a manual, probably in the menu bar and each time there was an upgrade (as opposed to a bug rectify) I would issue a new page on that topic. It is called 'common sense'.

I get the production of paratroopers what I dont get is how you use them. So lets start. You've produced them and we'll say they are in their little glider at an airfield/factory.

So you fly them where?

Is it

1. to one of your own or an allies airfield? Then what wait 15 hours to mobilize?

2. over land and get them to jump out? If so how?

3. land them in an enemy province but where at an airfield?

I have tried everything and all I end up doing is having a glorified air convoy of expensive troops doing rock all.

At the end of the day on here there are two types of customer, those that pay and the freeloaders. All I ask is that we have a clear and up to date manual, not much to ask is it?

The whole concept of paratroopers in the game is tosh. What you failed to answer was that the main purpose of them is to GET THEM INTO ACTION QUICKLY. Just how do you do that waiting 15 hours?

Whilst Arnheim was in the end 'a bridge too far' I am sure Montgomery's plan wasn't for my great uncle to land in a nice little Dutch field make a brew and with his mates hang around for 15 hours before sauntering into town. No doubt the Germans would have said 'hi Tommy we saw you 15 hours ago, good effort how about supper before we take you to a POW camp'.

The vulneability of paras is landing in the wrong place, which in part is what happened at Arnheim, did happen at Sicily and no doubt elsewhere.

Sometimes I wonder if the developers have lost the plot as clearly they have with submarines.

In the end some of us are customers....and customers pay.

So to clarify how to use paras:

To move them across airfields, use them how you would with airplanes, and they would move like airplanes. However, to use them to attack a province, you press "attack" then direct to some enemy province within that range. The paras would then fly to that province and promptly convert into the soldiers, not the plane. That's when the delay starts ticking, and the rest you should know. Note: if the province is empty, you would just capture it before the delay (I think).

Little Racoon wrote:

Note: if the province is empty, you would just capture it before the delay (I think).

Paratroopers are intended to fly as a plane and attack an enemy unit or province center directly. They will attack whatever they land on immediately in what you might call the “jump”. It is up to you to make sure that whatever they land on is a profitable enough target to be worth the wait.

After the jump the mobilization time is the amount of time needed before they are ready to march elsewhere into battle, or be packaged back into a plane and be used again.

If you want to convert them from a plane to a land unit at your own airbase you can do this as well.

The delays of mobilization time are necessary to allow paratroopers to be useful in their element without being a multi purpose high speed shock troop which would imbalance the game.

For more info you can check out this player created guide or any other in that section, or do a search here on the forum for additional information. Guide to Paratroopers

Vorlon answered it already perfectly, but in case you want a bullet point list:

• When in airplane mode, attack any enemy unit or province to drop them.
• Dropped Paras convert to Infantry mode right away and start fighting right away.
• When dropped on an enemy province they conquer the province immediately.
• After the drop and fighting is over, the mobilization time kicks in, for balancing reasons (otherwise players would be able to quickly conquer the whole territory of other players who are offline)
• While at an airbase you can convert Paratroopers at any time manually from Infantry to airplane or the other way around without dropping them.
• Converting manually also takes some time and costs resources when done from Infantry to airplane.
• While flying between your own airports with a move command, no mobilization times occur. They move like normal airplanes as long as they are in airplane mode.

Some use cases for Paratroopers:

• Hop over sea or from island to island to quickly conquer inaccessible provinces.
• Drop them into industrial centers or capitals of unsuspecting foes to deal a major blow to their economy. You could even use their own buildings against them after conquering (e.g. producing quick units to conquer even more).
• Drop paratroopers on unguarded enemy support troops, like Artillery. Beware of moving units, Paratroopers drop where the command was given, they don't follow the unit (you may have to adjust the location shortly before arriving).
• Drop Paratroopers on choke-point provinces behind the frontline to stall enemy reinforcements to the front.
• Fly Paratroopers to own provinces where reinforcements are urgently needed and convert them manually to Infantry to prepare for the enemy attack.
• Drop Paratroopers right into ongoing ground battles to reinforce your troops.

Thanks for explaning this. Is this in a manual?

Just trying your instructions out. In airplane mode paratroopers just want to go as a road convoy to enemy province. ugh?

I'm not sure exactly what the circumstances of your game are, but:

1.) Ensure they are at a functional airbase.

2.) Select the 'Attack' command.

3.) Choose a suitable target within range.

I consider a suitable target to be an unoccupied provincial center. I've never used them on anything else because I don't see the point. Because I've never used them on anything else, this is where I can definitely say it absolutely works.

Otherwise, they will most certainly turn into a convoy.

ok

Paratroopers are not that hard to control tbh, they act like a plane but when they attack they become a land unit, which then needs, as you have said, a mobilization period, which does balance it out, but I agree can be annoying with how long it is. There isn't really a good solution to fix this, infact I can only think of one, let the Paratroopers move during the Mobilization and Attack and do everything else, but they do it at 50-75% reduction so like they have, 75% reduced speed and 75% reduced damage. This is honestly not even a good substitution as it will mainly make Paratroopers less popular.

I will usually use them unlike some of you guys, having the ability to have troops behind enemy lines can be really helpful, it also allows countries like Germany in HWW to get troops to Great Britain without having to transport them through a normally heavily gaurded sea. Then once the enemy is distracted with those paratroopers either A: you take that time to produce more troops and prepare for a counterattack, or B: you use them as a spearhead and then can use more troops to support them.

I will also use them as a defense unit which sounds crazy but it works, if you have parratroopers and the enemy has your front units outgunned and they get overran, you can send paratroopers behind his front lines and walk into his territory, this sounds like it wont work but trust me, most CoW players have large stacks right and usually those stacks are in the frontlines anything behind those large stacks are usually solo units. Paratroopers are decently strong and can take out those single units then the enemy will have to scramble to defend it, how the enemy might do this is A: scramble to produce more troops to counter the paratroopers, (they might do this using gold), or B: they might be forced to retreat there large stacks and try to catch your paratroopers while they are being mobilized or from behind.

Either way, Paratroopers can be a VERY useful unit it just depends on how you use them. Now i dont expect any of you to agree with me on this and hate me all you want just my opinion

PorterJ wrote:

Either way, Paratroopers can be a VERY useful unit it just depends on how you use them. Now i dont expect any of you to agree with me on this and hate me all you want just my opinion

Or nukes. Nukes are a cooler niche.

Oh I forgot to mention there extremem importance when fighting someone with railroad gun stack.

I was playing a match in HWW as Spain, and India had a stack of 4 railroad guns with 2 lvl 5 aa units, I tried attacking it with my own railroad guns and they stood no chance and producing a stack of rairoad guns was gonna be too expensive. My airforce was also getting ripped to shreds cuz of his high leveled aa. Besides Aircraft wasnt really my strategy at the time as I was fighting in Africa and building enough airstrips to be able to attack anywhere in Africa was way to expensive. Eventually what I had to do was gather some of my weaker units that were partially dead or just weak, like militia and I surrounded the railroads guns with it, at the time I had full control of Africa except two provinces the Rail Road guns were stationed in, so surrounding them was pretty easy. I then moved all of the surrounding units in at the same time, delayed them to arrive at the same time and waited for his guns to start firing on the ground units, and timed my Paratroopers to attack, I had about 6 lvl 2 paratroopers, they suffered heavy losses due to the aa, but then caused the railroad guns to attack at close range which allowed my ground units to continue advancing. Eventually the Railroad guns were destroyed, 2 paratroopers survived, and some of the ground units.

My point is though that Paratroopers despite their extreme costs and weak combat stats are extremely strong. Immagine fighting someone with some large stacks of aircraft and you know exactly where their airstrip is. These planes are destroying your ground troops too and causing alot of trouble, if you wait for him to be offline, and attack the airstrip then those planes (if there isnt another nearby airstrip can die) which can eliminate alot of planes. If there is a nearby airstrip, the owner was probably using the first one for a reason, say it gave him a better attack range, or better defensive spot idk.

PorterJ wrote:

Oh I forgot to mention there extremem importance when fighting someone with railroad gun stack.

I was playing a match in HWW as Spain, and India had a stack of 4 railroad guns with 2 lvl 5 aa units, I tried attacking it with my own railroad guns and they stood no chance and producing a stack of rairoad guns was gonna be too expensive. My airforce was also getting ripped to shreds cuz of his high leveled aa. Besides Aircraft wasnt really my strategy at the time as I was fighting in Africa and building enough airstrips to be able to attack anywhere in Africa was way to expensive. Eventually what I had to do was gather some of my weaker units that were partially dead or just weak, like militia and I surrounded the railroads guns with it, at the time I had full control of Africa except two provinces the Rail Road guns were stationed in, so surrounding them was pretty easy. I then moved all of the surrounding units in at the same time, delayed them to arrive at the same time and waited for his guns to start firing on the ground units, and timed my Paratroopers to attack, I had about 6 lvl 2 paratroopers, they suffered heavy losses due to the aa, but then caused the railroad guns to attack at close range which allowed my ground units to continue advancing. Eventually the Railroad guns were destroyed, 2 paratroopers survived, and some of the ground units.

My point is though that Paratroopers despite their extreme costs and weak combat stats are extremely strong. Immagine fighting someone with some large stacks of aircraft and you know exactly where their airstrip is. These planes are destroying your ground troops too and causing alot of trouble, if you wait for him to be offline, and attack the airstrip then those planes (if there isnt another nearby airstrip can die) which can eliminate alot of planes. If there is a nearby airstrip, the owner was probably using the first one for a reason, say it gave him a better attack range, or better defensive spot idk.

it could but you would need more troops just depends on how you play it (but if you have him surrounded in the middle of africa you don'tneed to worry about his planes attacking you as you prep)

there is two opinions that i have seen in call of war on paratroopers.

1. You hate them because they cost alot and you are upset at there battle statistics, and see no point in using them. Especially with the mobilization phase.

2. Or you use them because you know that they arent really suposed to be used in combat against other units and really are for taking territories that are probably undefended and cause the enemy to send troops to that location (which can distract him/her) or use them against stacks to buy your artillery and planes time to do more bombing runs.

Either way it is really just a game, and it doesn't matter how you play, people have won it in a thousand different ways. And some of those had to have used paratroopers.

The thing for me is that interceptors render them rather useless. Also keeping some forces behind in defense, though obviously many won’t have both. I just think it’s better to use their resources on other things that are more likely to help.