USA/USAF Units in USMC OOB

[Suhiir]

I was thinking along the lines of creating two OOB's.
Western (NATO) Bombers
Eastern (Warsaw Pact & Asia) Bombers
That should free up 5-15 unit slots per OOB.
Bombers really aren't used much except by the occasional scenario designer.

[Basileus Ioannis]

that's what I do on my custom OOBs, transplant all the air units first to clear up room to move units around so I can see how much room is left for air. I used to use one of the "unused" OOB numbers, but now they're all used for active nations or for R&D use, so I've had to improvise. the only problem game-wise is, nationalities determine names/ranks, so if you look up these air units on your org chart, you might see odd name/rank match-ups for your nationality. the allies button seems to use names and ranks for that nationality number, and not the active player's nationality

for #12 USA, the alternative would be to suck all the naval gunfire/transport/amphibs over to #13 USMC, which would free up some room for air; then segregate Army and AF onto #12, and Navy and MC onto #13. then you still have the paradox of airstrikes being led by Lieutenants with Sergeants as wingmen. solution: make airstrikes a Company formation type, with a single aircraft, and subformation of one aircraft as a Platoon; this will make Captains leading Lieutenants on airstrikes

but this leaves the Navy problem...and outside of burning up a whole Nationality just for the Navy (for each Nationality that has an active Navy, that could be a lot of Nationalities!), I can't see how we can incorporate naval ranks. if money/effort/time were not a factor, recoding to incorporate a branch of service flag and making separate rank lists for each branch of service could be done, but that's heavy on the PITA and light on ROI. I recommend the new airstrike formations and leaving it at that

John

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I have to agree with all this. I pushed hard in the Jets/Planes and other Threads real hard with Don. As I found out yes it would be a major project just to do what I thought would "thin the herd" in the OOBs. It's not simply a matter of deleting units and there would be 300-400 units (Small countries keep theirs for many reasons.) to deleted from the OOBs, Campaigns and Scenarios, software and other technical issues are involved as well. Don and Andy are well aware of this issue. And I know from my position only, Don winces every time I submit a relevant piece of equipment to the USA OOB because we know there's only ~27 open slots left there without allowing for what I submitted this year along with others to include Don as well. However about a year ago Don did post that Andy and him are working on solutions to the OOB slot issue. We can only hope.

Regards,
Pat