penlin wrote:I'm learning the game still, especially the naval part. Sometimes, it seems a Union fleet can go past river/coastal forts without trouble. Other times, the bombardment from the fort is decimating. A few questions:
1) how to know exactly what sort of movement will trigger a bombardment? I've found this very tricky, especially around some of the major coastal cities (e.g. New Orleans, Charleston) with several small regions nearby with coastal forts.
Okay, I'll give a shot at this (pun completely intended
).
[INDENT]In the following the term
ships refers to all naval vessels including all oceanic ships and all riverine vessels.[/INDENT]
Artillery inside a fort not in Passive Posture (PP) and not commanded by a leader which is inactivated (has a sealed envelope/brown envelope/
"brownie") will always try to bombard passing ships. They will also exchange gunnery with ships, which themselves choose to bombard a fort, regardless of whether these ships are
passing a fort or not.
What regulates "passing a fort" and whether the fort may bombard is the Double Adjacency Rule (DAR). If a fleet moves from one region, which is adjacent to a fort, directly into another region, which is also adjacent to the same fort, the DAR becomes effective and the fort can bombard the fleet within the above restrictions.
[INDENT]
Note: if a harbor and its exit point are both adjacent to a fort, ships sailing into or out of the harbor can be bombard[/INDENT]
The forts I know that can bombard passing ships per the DAR are Fort Macon NC, Fort Caswell NC, Fort Pickens FL, Fort Morgen AL and Fort Saint Philips LA (not Fort Jackson, or it's the other way around; I don't remember which exactly right now). Passing any other forts along the southern Atlantic and Gulf coast will not trigger the DAR.
penlin wrote:2) how to predict how well a fleet will do during a bombardment? Sometimes, they seem to pass through with minor impact. Other times, it's major. Once or twice, the fleet has been almost completely destroyed.
How well a fleet will do bombarding a fort is very unpredictable. Never count on doing very much damage. You will not likely bombard a fort into submission. The main thing that will work against ships bombarding is lower than optimal cohesion, which will suffer from long moves before bombardment and receiving hits from the fort's bombardment itself.
Hits scored by a bombarding fort are capped at 50 hits per fleet. In Naval Combat (including bombardment) the firing guns will attempt to hit the biggest ships first. This does not mean that other targets will not get hit, just that the chances are much lower.
penlin wrote:3) is all of this working as intended? It seems that a commander would withdraw rather than follow my (stupid) orders that result in the total destruction of a fleet.
Unfortunately
yes. Each bombardment is one round and within that round if a fleet is being decimated there is no mechanism to break off the bombardment by the fleet to save the damaged ships from being sunk. That would require rewriting the bombardment rules.
My Rules-of-Thumb for forts and bombardment and
sneaking past forts are:
- Never attempt to bombard with oceanic ships unless you have a huge number of them with as many armored steam frigates as possible with the fleet lead by a very good naval leader. There's no point to anything else.
- The same goes for bombarding river forts with ironclads.
- If you are trying to pass a fort on a river, always have plenty of IC's in your fleet to slough off hits that would otherwise hit smaller boats and transports transporting land units. Don't forget, supply will not pass forts with artillery mounted, so take enough with you.
- Spare your fleets as much as possible, transport a good invasion force, land on the fort and fight the fort's garrison to submission.
Good sailing!