Wish: Ironclads in the right water

[malthaussen]

I wonder if there would be a way to make the game produce river ironclads only on river harbors and coastal ironclads (i.e., Monitor class) only on coastal harbors. In my current game, I have Philadelphia building a river ironclad (good luck getting that one on the Ohio) and Pittsburgh building a Monitor (good luck getting that one to Philadelphia!) This is really annoying.

-- Mal

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Carrington]

I wonder if there would be a way to make the game produce river ironclads only on river harbors and coastal ironclads (i.e., Monitor class) only on coastal harbors. In my current game, I have Philadelphia building a river ironclad (good luck getting that one on the Ohio) and Pittsburgh building a Monitor (good luck getting that one to Philadelphia!) This is really annoying.

-- Mal

Actually, both of them should be able to get to their natural habitat, much in the same way the light warship on Lake Michigan can get out to the Atlantic.

[caranorn]

Actually, both of them should be able to get to their natural habitat, much in the same way the light warship on Lake Michigan can get out to the Atlantic.

Yes, you might just have to wait for good weather (ice will prevent those movements). That part of the USA had extensive canal networks that are represented in the game...

Also I believe you could use monitors on the rivers and ironclads at sea if you wanted. Neither can move to the high seas, but both I believe are able to navigate coastal and river...

[Carrington]

Yes, you might just have to wait for good weather (ice will prevent those movements). That part of the USA had extensive canal networks that are represented in the game...

Though, actually, I'm not sure that these canals were necessarily navigable by the sorts of transports and ironclads represented in the game -- e.g. the Illinois and Michigan canal from Chicago to the Illinois river was 6 ft deep, maximum and 60 ft wide.

Have folks run into documentation of river boats actually traveling the I&M or Erie canals?

[malthaussen]

I've never seen any reference of ironclads traversing any of the canals. All the coastal ironclads (Monitor types) were built on the Atlantic seaboard, and all the river ironclads (for the USA, anyway) were built at either Carondolet or Mound City, afaik. I did discover those canals buried in the map clutter, but when I first tried to use them, the AI sent the riverine boat around FLA and the monitor down the Mississippi. I had to retrace their routes and do the transfers step-by-step.

It appears that riverine boats can traverse coastal waters, but at a movement penalty. Monitors can move in both coastal and shallow, so they can run on rivers. Historically, though, the only rivers they served on were on the Atlantic coast...

On a sort-of-related topic, I notice that the river ironclads that are built or come as reinforcements do not carry their historical names, at least in the '61 scenario with Kentucky. No Caronelet, St. Louis, Essex, or Mound City in the bunch. I looked at the models for the river ironclads, and those names don't even appear in the list -- although they do, oddly, for river gunboats. (Speaking of which, the river gunboats don't have the Tyler, Lexington, or Conestoga -- although a river ironclad may be built named Tyler) Strangely, the ironclads in the short Ft Donelson scenario are properly named. It's chrome, but it's odd the names aren't right.

-- Mal

[Gray_Lensman]

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