I think a repeating or tandem transport launch is probably better here than a shuck.
Traditionally the shuck is when you use 1 movement point to pick up units with your transport, and the 2nd movement point to return to the sea zone where your transport began, to then unload the units. You use the same transport every round, always returning to the same sz you started out in. The best example of the Shuck would be in Classic: UK to Eastern Canada, then back to UK to unload. Or Karelia to UK and back to Karelia to unload. Or Algeria to Eastern Canada, then back to Algeria to unload etc. And if you can move troops both ‘into’ and ‘out of’ the same territory, during the same round, with a “double shuck” or a “multiple shuck”, then you’ve successfully set up a “Conveyor Belt” with your transports!
Woot!
So in Classic, Revised etc, you can shuck out of Eastern Canada, but never out of Eastern United States, since there’s no where to go from E.US in one move that does you any good. Similarly you can shuck out of UK, or Japan, but only to territories within one sz space away. Otherwise its not a shuck, its just a normal transport move.
In contrast to the shuck, is the tandem transport launch or the repeating launch, where you send transports out in waves, and then have them return home, only to be replaced by the next wave, and repeat this over a series of rounds. It can be faster in the short term, but its also twice as expensive, and uses only half your transport capacity per round. The basic difference in idea is this, a shuck has the transport loading/unloading units every-single-round. A launch has the transport loading/unloading units every-other-round, and repeatedly trading out positions with another transport to which it is paired.
This is why the shuck, was so popular, because it maxed out your transport capacity to the fullest, making the most of your initial investment and allowing you to hold a sea zone in force without exposing your transports. Basically you can think of it as “shuck” to get the units, then “shuck” back to the safe sea zone, where all your naval units are stacked up in a massive pile. The “shuck, shuck” move established the original pattern for the KGF game, which has since become ubiquitous in later A&A maps.
But in G40 harbors mess with the shuck, because now you have 3 movement points to work with instead of 2. Gah! What are we to do? :evil:
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Let check it out in G40 with SA as the example:
In this case the simple shuck gets you from the coast of Kenya sz 72, to South Africa, and then back again to unload, but you’d be giving up the extra movement bonus from the harbor. However, by using a second transport in tandem with the first, you could instead make a repeating launch move. This is what I think YG is driving at. Here you can go from SA to Cairo, and then 3 moves back the following round. It costs more ipcs in the initial investment, and one transport (the returning empty transport) is always stalled by a round, but the cumulative movement advantage is better since you’d get the bonus move 3 spaces in both directions each round.
The hang up in either case, whether shuck or repeating launch, is that the minor in SA produces 3 units. So unless you upgrade to a major (and who has the cash for that?), you will always either have 1 unit left behind, or 1 empty space on a transport. I think Mech is probably faster for the cost in the long run, but that carrier from the Med through the Red Sea is a cool play. Basically makes the cruiser in 91 a bit more important, since you know you’d want all air on Taranto, if foregoing the carrier absorption. Saves 16 tuv though, if you can keep the carrier alive, which is always a plus :-D
This might be a semantic pedantic thing, but just for clarity, so we know the plan… Which of these where you thinking?
A. The shuck play: the transport starts in sz 72, moves to sz 71 to pick up units out of the South Africa factory, and then moves back to sz 72 to unload them into Kenya. Repeat.
B. The tandem launch play: transport starts in sz 71 picks up units from South Africa, then moves all the way to sz 81 to unload the units. Purchase another Transport and drop it in sz 71. On the following round these transports “launch” to change positions, the loaded one going from sz 71 to sz 81 Cairo, the unloaded one returning from sz 81 to sz 71 South Africa, to launch again the following round. Repeat.
I think the latter probably has the better chance of success. The problem with a factory buy, is not so much that its expensive, but rather that it paints a bright red target on Cairo, and forces the Axis to throw their full weight at the problem or risk losing the whole game. So a factory buy is like a gambit. A transport on the other hand is a bit more unassuming. 2 transports slightly less so, but if you can split it up over a couple rounds, you might be able to sneak into it.
One thing that’s kind of weird about transports in this case though, is that you really get a better value out of the transport capacity if you buy artillery rather than mech or tanks (because you want to get the maximum movement advantage for the cheaperst most effective ground unit, for the money you just spent on transports.) The logic here being, that mech and tanks can already blitz, so why bother transporting mech? This gets you a fairly sweet buy if you can set it up. 14 ipcs in transports, then you can drop…
1 mech, 1 inf, 1 artillery, for a total cost 11 ipcs a round.
The Mech blitzes north, the infantry and artillery coast to Cairo on the transport. The mech will always be one round behind, but that’s not terrible. By the time the mech links up you can activate it with the artillery units and the infantry fodder you just transported. Or if you want to spend more loot, then alternate between 1 tank or 1 mech, + 1 art and 1 infantry.
The only way I can see getting better than 3 production worth of units onto Cairo, without a factory buy up in the mid east somewhere, using this sort of tandem launch, would require an upgrade to a major in SA. It costs 20 ipcs, way heavy of an investment. Probably a bit off the deep end, because by the time you set it up, UK wouldn’t have any money to spend on it or London is gone. Or Japan would probably be on the way, desperate to punish UK immediately for spending on an upgrade.
Still just with the pair of transports, launching, and the lone mech or tanks racing north, I think you might recover some of the speed long term. Its not faster than an alternate 3 mech might be, per se, but the artillery projection is potent for the cost. Anyone ever bid a transport in sz 71 just to try and get that sort of situation going? I mean if you could get it at 13 to Allies, that might not be a bad investment on a UK transport to park it by the destroyer, especially if you wanted to try the carrier plan.
Or is the idea to just use the 2 original transports near the Indian Ocean for this plan (pulling them off other targets back to SA), without any additional ship purchases?
Do your buddies bid, or do you play this game with other rules to offset the need for an Allied leg up?