Are people happy with commerce raider balance?

[Lew]

When playing the CSA, I find that sail frigates are *extremely* powerful raiders. Just a few will completely shut down Union gains from trade - that's something like a quarter of per-turn Union $+WS gone.

They're also quite difficult to catch. Under Semmes, they're even harder.

Are you getting the same experiences? Should it be so easy for the South to strangle Union commerce?

[Ace]

They should be hard to catch. Semmens was able to evade union warships almost till the end of the war.
On the other hand, their commerce raiding impact should be considerably lower.

[Jim-NC]

When playing the CSA, I find that sail frigates are *extremely* powerful raiders. Just a few will completely shut down Union gains from trade - that's something like a quarter of per-turn Union $+WS gone.

They're also quite difficult to catch. Under Semmes, they're even harder.

Are you getting the same experiences? Should it be so easy for the South to strangle Union commerce?

Most of the money for the union is untouchable by the commerce raiders. The commerce raiders sink some ships it's true, but the vast majority of the money the union gets "appears" in it's harbors, and is therefore untouchable by the CSA. This is in line with the CSA money which "appears" in harbors. Both types can be lowered by blockading ports. I agree that the raiders are hard to catch, but not impossible. You have to get lucky is all. Most of the time, they just get damaged, very infrequently do they get sunk.

If this was to change, it would be in AACW 2 (I look forward to the day).

[Ace]

[quote="

If this was to change, it would be in AACW 2 (I look forward to the day).[/QUOTE"]

Me too

[caranorn]

I remember reading in a wargaming magazine (S&T or Command) years ago how damaging the Confederate raiders were to US commerce. Essentially most of the pre war Union merchant marine was sunk, though by the end of the war, through new constructions, the fleet ended up being larger than before. Well, that's what I remember from the article, been ages since i read it so I could be wrong...

[Cromagnonman]

I have noticed that, as the Union, I rarely lose ships in the shipping box. Maybe it's because Athena relies on brigs, but even without escorts my transports rarely suffer more than a hit every few turns. However, if I load as the CSA, they appear to be getting at least 1 message per turn saying they have sunk a Union transport worth $5k and some WS. These messages seem to bear no relationship to either what is going on in the shipping box or to how much money & WS the Union is bringing in. Furthermore, it does not seem to affect CSA at all. Perhaps this could be fodder future patches/installements. Any thoughts?

[Citizen X]

All I can say is that as union player my cash goes down by a third and more when the confederate places no more than 3 brigs and 2 frigates in the shipping box. Thus resulting in having less money for reinforcements at hand than when I play the rebel side.
Only thing that helped a bit was buying many transports and sending them into the antlantic, severely crippling my capabilities for landing operations. (Either buy transports and have no troops or have troops but no ships).

I have the impression that now in 62 I am still lacking behind in size of army. Can't be right.

On the other hand I never lose ships.

[Cromagnonman]

Hmmm. IIRC, eventually the commerce raiders would have to return to port and leave the box unmolested. However, my income was not appreciably changed. When loading as CSA, their income was much lower than USA.

[Brochgale]

The one sure way to throttle CSA raiding of your shipping is to instigate blockades on CSA harbours.

I lose a lot of ships [blockade runners] in my PvP games. The yankee blockades will slow down raiders considerably and often do a lot of damage to them and I have to return them for resupply or lose them eventually.

Operation Anaconda was one very successful campaign in the actual war.