Commerce raider question

[TheDoctorKing]

When the CSA commerce raiders get a result of "58 money and 4 WS", what does that mean? Is the stuff deducted from the USA total? Is it, or any part of it, added to the CSA total? What sort of damage is put on the USA transports?

Has anybody figured out what the payoff is per commerce raider in the shipping box?

[soloswolf]

It's taken off of what they would have made. The Federals never see that they actually 'lost' anything. The Confederates do not get any piece of it.

I'm not sure what the per raider value is.

[TheDoctorKing]

Hmmm. You'd think they would know that their pipelines were being trashed by Confederate raiders.

[Big Muddy]

Seems as though the raiders keep it for themselves. To bad it couldn't be added to the CSA coffers. Is it really worth the risk? Come to think of it, I don't recall having ever sunk a ship in the boxes, (not to suggest others haven't).

I have had merchant ships sunk, but no notification of any missing money or WS, is that because the ship is at the bottom of the ocean.

[Major Tom]

Seems as though the raiders keep it for themselves. To bad it couldn't be added to the CSA coffers. Is it really worth the risk? Come to think of it, I don't recall having ever sunk a ship in the boxes, (not to suggest others haven't).

I have had merchant ships sunk, but no notification of any missing money or WS, is that because the ship is at the bottom of the ocean.

For me, raiding the shipping box is only worth it early in the game. Once the Union has enough strength in the box to start beating up your raiders, it ceases to make sense.

I believe it's May 1861 when you get Semmes appearing in the shipping box with one brig (a single ship squadron). You also start with two frigates, Plymouth Sq., in Richmond. Send the Plymouth Sq. to the shipping box to team up with Semmes and his brig. If they survive the run past Fort Monroe they'll "sink" about 22 points per turn of $+WS. And that's free, with no investment on the part of the CSA, only the opportunity cost of what those ships could do elsewhere.

As far as the frigates go, what else is there to do with them? A single 2-ship frigate squadron is of no tactical use anywwhere on the map, as far as I can see. So, apart from leaving them to collect barnacles in Richmond harbor, the shippng box is the obvious place to put them, and there really isn't much opportunity cost to consider.

With the brig that comes in under Semmes, the obvious alternative is to send it to the Atlantic blockade box, where it can bring back $+WS for the CSA rather than just reducing the Union's $+WS earnings. In fact, that's what I always did until I ran a test game against passive AI to track data on the effectiveness of blockade runners. While a single brig added to the blockade box could be expected to yield a combined 2 units of $+WS per turn, with diminishing results once more than 10 brigs are in the box, the same single brig (when 2 frigates are added) was solely responsible for depriving the Union of a combined 12 units of $+WS. With a choice between earning 2 or depriving your enemy of 12, I think the choice is pretty easy.

But, the brig was only effective in the shipping box when combined with the frigate squadron. Here are the results I got from several turns of testing --

With just the brig I was sinking 3 $+WS per turn.
With the brig and 2 frigates I was sinking 22 $+WS per turn.
With only the two frigates I was sinking 10 $+WS per turn.

These results were consistent over several turns, with zero variation.

Sorry to digress here, but...I can't explain these results. Why would the 2 frigates be twice as effective when teamed with a single brig? My assumption was that the brig had a better spotting value for locating enemy shipping, which combined in a synergistic way with the frigates' fighting power. But, frigates are superior to brigs in every measurement except hide value, so that makes no sense. And Pocus has said that all that matters in the naval boxes is the patrol value of the stronger force compared to the evade value of the weaker one (plus modifiers for weather and stack size). But, that's only for determining whether naval combat will occur. Obviously, for interdicting shipping there's a different calculation, and brigs must offer some advantage that's not apparent in their statistics, all of which are inferior to the frigate's.

But, regardless of what game mechanism is producing the results, they are real. So, to me it's an easy decision to send the Plymouth Squadron from Richmond to the shipping box as soon as they unlock, even at the risk of being sunk by the guns at Fort Monroe, and then to leave them there along with Semmes and one brig for as long as possible. Eventually, the Union will strengthen their fleet in the shipping box and your raiders will be severaly damaged. At that point, it may be time to give up on raiding the shipping box. Try to save the brig, but consider just leaving the frigates there until they're sunk. Up until now, you've been raiding at no cost. Now you'll have to spend $+WS to repair your ships, and frigates are pretty expensive for the CSA to repair, and of no real tactical value once repaired -- at least I can see no tactical function for them that can't be performed as well and more cheaply by brigs, and I believe it costs as much in $+WS to repair ships as it does to build them from scratch.

[Jim-NC]

Major Tom,
Thanks for your analysis. It has helped me rob the USA of much more money (I had not considered adding the plymouth sq. until I saw your posts.

[Major Tom]

I'm glad you got some practical use out of the info, Jim

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted