How to change the type of your stacks

Originally meant to include this on my new upcoming FAQ but the topic resulted to be way too extend, so I'm making an individual thread to the matter.

TL;DR version:
-You can make walls with sea transport+bomber, helicopter+marine, etc etc
- Land units will defend before the trans if the transport is overloaded or a bit further in-land.


in-deep:




There are mainly 6 types of Stack Icons in atWar:



1. None: used for some custom units.
2. Infantry: used by infantries, marines, ground transports and relatives.
3. Tanks: used for tanks, cavaly and their relatives.
4. Destroyer: used for sea units that goes above water such as destroyers, sea transports and relatives.
5. Submarine: used for sea units that goes beyond water such as submarines and relatives.
6. Bomber: used for every type of aircraft such as bombers, air transports, helicopters, and relatives.

Despite the previous distinction, the game only recognizes three (and an additional one) type of stacks:

- Land stack: A well-know one. All units participates in battle.
- Sea stack: an stack composed by sea units. If there's an unit with capacity, land units won't participate in battle.
- Air stack: an stack composed by air units. If there's an unit with capacity, land units won't participate in battle.
- Carrier stack: will be described later on.

When there are multiple units, the current stack type will depend whenever it has been moved or not.

- When they have/are moving or mixed to another stack, the stack type will be Land if all the units are land-type (the icon will be of the biggest individual unit-type in the stack, or the highest in the hierarchy if tied). If there's a single air or sea unit however, the whole stack becomes air or sea-type. The hierarchy is [ Destroyer > Submarine > Sea Transport > Air units] >>> [Infantry > Tank] For example, the following stack will be air-type even though there are 8 infantries and just one bomber:



The following stack will be displayed as sea due to the hierarchy:



- Now If the stack didn't move from the previous turn, then the stack type will be dependable of the terrain. In sea/air the stack will become sea/land type, in-land the biggest individual unit-type will define the hierarchy. It's quite curious that land units abandoned in open sea won't display their att/def stats, in allusion that they became of another type. When attacked they will still defend as any regular unit.



In our previous example above we can see that after ending turn, the stack becomes land-type again:



This sum up the basic of the stack-type theory. Until now nothing of the above actually affects the current game mechanics except for some icons changes.



There is a new group of stack that have enough different quality to be distinguish from the rest. The carrier-type is achieved by combining units with capacity with those that have not. They also need to be from different type (i.e land and sea or land and air or sea and air). The easier representation of a carrier type is perhaps one infantry loaded on a sea transport as follows:



The following combinations will produce a carrier-type of stack:
- Sea transport + any land unit
- Air Transport + any land unit
- Helicopter + any land unit
- Sea transport + bomber
- Air Transport + destroyer
- Helicopter + Sea Transport
- Air Transport + Sea Transport
.
.
And so on. Although the submarine can also produce a carrier-type, it's special in the sense that it can't form a wall like the rest of carrier-type.

All carrier-type of stacks can form a wall with each others, but they can't with their original type (land, sea, air). The game will only display the walling lines when you're moving a sea+land combination, so you're going to assume that it does the rest of combinations (the wall WILL be formed at the start of the next turn, assuming there is no WF and the other walling rules are followed). The following screenshot is made of a wall with a sea transport and a bomber:



This will work in any type of terrain, granted the conditions to do it are met.



Another useful application of the stack type changes are to convert a carrier stack into land stack. This can come in hand when you need your land units to defend first than the transport and therefore not being killed with it.

Currently there are two know ways to make the land units to defend first than the sea transports:

1) Overloading it

All the transports only prevent units that can be covered by their capacity to battle. When overloaded, even with one unit, the sea transport can't prevent this and therefore the infantries are allowed to fight. In this case we won't see any icon changes. Beware that moving the transport with any type of unit can cause the stack to turn into water again, and - if tbed - can result in a sunk of all your troops.

The following picture shows overloaded transport:



When attacked, the infantries will defend before the sea transport



UNLESS you've tried to move the transport (and got tbed). In my test with aqollo this essentially happened whenever you tried to move a stack of troops (i.e, 10 units)




This can be prevented by moving a few amount of units just so the other side remains stacked (i.e, 4 units but still 16 remaining in the other side)



2) Turning it to land-type.

It's possible to turn the transport stack into land-type of they're set to land instead of sea. The issue had generated a myth about "docked" transport, in which land units will defend. In my tests with theridder he clarified that it's not only docking the transport, but also reaching a little further in-land.

The following stack consisting on 15 units and a sea transport were left in-land




Next turn, they became land-type (notice the icon changes)



When this happens they will defend if attacked, but be careful just like when overloading it you can turn the stack into sea again if you move a large stack outside.



It's important to note that, depending where you left it, the transport may return to sea again. This is due to the game's mechanics in which units are "pushed" back to their respective terrains.

The screenshot after the battle shows how the stack turned back into sea again


It's also to note that air-transports will become land-type alone every time they are left in-land.

Hard work

Usefull to know

Interesting game mechanics ive always wonder why sometimes units inside defend and other times why they get sunked

Nice guide indeed Clovis.

But why sometimes when the sea transport is on land it has its own defense and sometimes the total defense of the stack?

Ecrit par Cold Case, 12.06.2016 at 16:34

when the sea transport is on land it has its own defense

Where they really in-land or just docked? Did you saw that their icon turned into land units?

Clovis4Mod

Ecrit par clovis1122, 12.06.2016 at 17:37

Ecrit par Cold Case, 12.06.2016 at 16:34

when the sea transport is on land it has its own defense

Where they really in-land or just docked? Did you saw that their icon turned into land units?

Docked

Ecrit par Cold Case, 12.06.2016 at 23:11

Ecrit par clovis1122, 12.06.2016 at 17:37

Ecrit par Cold Case, 12.06.2016 at 16:34

when the sea transport is on land it has its own defense

Where they really in-land or just docked? Did you saw that their icon turned into land units?

Docked

I think you've confused whenever a transport is "docked" or in-land. Docked is just to be touching land, like this:



The transport is "touching" land, and when I release my mouse it will be touching the island. You can unload troops because the transport is docked, but it is not in-land so your land units won't defend if attacked inside the transport.

Do note that docked and further in-land are different, in this screenshot you can see that the sea trans is not "touching" the island, but inside of it.



They are similar things, hence why it has been misunderstood for the community for a long time. Docked transport and further in-land are different.

Very interesting and useful, thank you Clovis

Thank you for your time and effort, Clovis!

I have not been able to follow this as well as I have the other topics like walls and turnblocking. I have two questions:

1) How do you get a transport in-land on purpose, like you show in the above reply post? I have had transports marooned on land due to a map glitch, which has not happened much since HTML5.

2) I do not see how to make land units defend from within a transport in open water. It's also impossible to overload a transport unless you either a) leave it docked and put too many units on the stack, or b) take two transports with units (like your example of 21, you would need two transports) and then move one of them away. Option (b) seems really dumb because those extra units are stuck there - you can't carry more than 20 without a second transport in the stack.

Thanks in advance.

Ecrit par RatWar, 16.07.2016 at 21:44

Thank you for your time and effort, Clovis!

I have not been able to follow this as well as I have the other topics like walls and turnblocking. I have two questions:

1) How do you get a transport in-land on purpose, like you show in the above reply post? I have had transports marooned on land due to a map glitch, which has not happened much since HTML5.

2) I do not see how to make land units defend from within a transport in open water. It's also impossible to overload a transport unless you either a) leave it docked and put too many units on the stack, or b) take two transports with units (like your example of 21, you would need two transports) and then move one of them away. Option (b) seems really dumb because those extra units are stuck there - you can't carry more than 20 without a second transport in the stack.

Thanks in advance.

Hey RatWar!

As for your first issue, you need to try to move the transport a little further in-land. Have you hear about maps shortcuts yet? To perform many of them you need to put your transport a little further in-land. If you start the next turn and you aren't sure about your transports being in-land then you can try sending one or two infantries to it: if the transport is in-land, the stack will become land-type.

As for your second issue, you're right when the transport is in open sea you would need to use another method of transportation in order to overload it (or removing, if possible, one of the many sea transports in that stack). That would leave the stack practically useless. But it also makes it costly for your opponent to Turn Block that stack (he would need a number of air units and/OR sea units equal to half the stack to be Turn Blocked; this only to have a 50% chances of turnblock!).

Seeing the transport close to land is a lot more common.

Cool - thanks!