Naval Warfare

[squarian]

Further thoughts after my last remarks in the 1.06 patch thread:

I'm just now beginning to get some real experience with the naval game. In the 75-83 campaign I'm playing under 1.05 vs. an opponent, the French have finally arrived and there has been one large naval battle. In the same campaign I'm playing vs. Athena under 1.06, the French and Spanish are in and so I'm also seeing how naval warfare works under the new patch (and AFAIK 1.06 changed nothing affecting the mechanics of naval combat or repair).

So, two points at this early stage, as suggestions for later patches:

1) Repairs take far too long. I can plant Howe in Charleston or New York (i.e. large ports with depots) and watch for almost an entire year before any of his ships gain any strength. Assuming naval supplies (principally timber and cordage) were available, every authority I've consulted indicates that 18th c. ships could be repaired fairly quickly.

2) Naval battles are far too decisive for the era. 18th c. naval warfare was famously indecisive, and my reading tells me that ships of the line were rarely sunk outright. The main effect of fleet engagements seems to have been that one or both sides' ships and crews were pounded to ineffectiveness, which would then force one or both sides to retire to port for refit. I haven't done a count yet, but in all the naval battles of the AWI, I'd be surprised if I found more than a handful of cases where SOLs were destroyed outright by enemy action. Yet in the last two major engagements I've played, the losses were half-a-dozen or more ships.

My suggestion: If possible, retool naval combat equations so that a) losses of cohesion are very steep and losses of strength less likely than now, and b) increase the rate of repairs for ships in port and decrease the cohesion recovery rate. In other words, a fleet on the losing end (or for that matter, the winner too) of a major engagement should generally be reduced to ineffectiveness for several turns, but few ships should be lost outright.

[arsan]

Hi

I haven't had many big naval battles so i cannot comment much on that. I didn't noticed many ship losses, only on completely loop sided battles, but my experience is just form middle/small sized battles against the AI.

But regarding the repair times my experiences is very different.
They use to get fixed in 2-3 turns or so... 4 max for an 80-90% damaged fleet
Are you sure you had enough supply at Charleston for the fleet and the troops stationed there??
As you surely knows, troops hits recovery (and naval repairs) don't happen when there is not a supply surplus in the region.
From my experience, units on a region with insufficient supply can gather supply from surrounding regions so they don't starve. But that adjacent region supply source don't allow units to regain hits. They need a proper supply surplus on his own region or they will remain on the red.
Cheers!

[Ebbingford]

I think that the level of the harbour makes a big difference to repairs. Might even need to be a certain level for any repair to happen at all!

Edit


Just found this thread

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=14268&highlight=ship+repairs

[arsan]

Yes, sure it does!
But both Charleston and New York (the ports Squarian comments about) are big ports.
New York it's also a very big city so it has a huge supply production capability, so he would has to had there a huge fleet and a huge land stack to get into supply problems.
Charleston supply situation its pretty good, but far from New York. It's easier to not have enough supply there.
Regarding this, i used to make a big mistake until i noticed it
I always carefully counted on the armies supply needs and the regions supply production... but completely forgot about fleets in port.
Sailors also eat, and a big fleet can be a real drain of supplies for a region!

[Ebbingford]

Got to be a supply problem. New York and Charlestown are level 10 and 8 harbours.
I seem to remember that large fleets consume lots of supply.

[squarian]

Actually, I've had the main fleet at New York, Charleston or sometimes Philadelphia to recover, depending on the game. I knew about supply and have kept a close eye on it, checking the totals for all forces or at least checking to make sure the region shows green with the supply filter each turn. Sometimes the overall supply demand is larger than the region can provide, but I'm taking those turns into consideration. Even so, I have had Howe's fleet sitting at port on passive, with plenty of supply, for many turns with no repairs as far as I could detect. All I can suppose is that the number of naval units affects the equation somehow, since it's a large fleet?

[squarian]

Another related topic. My opponent and I are wondering whether bombardment of ships by coastal/fortress guns isn't rather exaggerated. He was trying to send a French squadron to reinforce a landing at Savannah and forget to bypass the coastal region outside Charleston, with the result that his ships took a beating and were delayed long enough for me to be able to re-take Savannah.

So we're both scratching our heads - the coastal sea zones are maybe 100-150km wide, and the biggest fortress guns of the era had max effective ranges of maybe 3-5km? Unless a squadron has bombard orders, or was landing troops in the same land region as the guns, or trapped without room to maneuver, why would it ever come within range?

Perhaps this feature was imported from AACW, where a case might be made for rifled guns dominating a larger area - but it seems to us that BoA2 could benefit from this fix: artillery can't bombard ships unless the ships are bombarding, landing, or in shallow (river) zones. What say ye?

[lodilefty]

Another related topic. My opponent and I are wondering whether bombardment of ships by coastal/fortress guns isn't rather exaggerated. He was trying to send a French squadron to reinforce a landing at Savannah and forget to bypass the coastal region outside Charleston, with the result that his ships took a beating and were delayed long enough for me to be able to re-take Savannah.

So we're both scratching our heads - the coastal sea zones are maybe 100-150km wide, and the biggest fortress guns of the era had max effective ranges of maybe 3-5km? Unless a squadron has bombard orders, or was landing troops in the same land region as the guns, or trapped without room to maneuver, why would it ever come within range?

Perhaps this feature was imported from AACW, where a case might be made for rifled guns dominating a larger area - but it seems to us that BoA2 could benefit from this fix: artillery can't bombard ships unless the ships are bombarding, landing, or in shallow (river) zones. What say ye?

Don't try to scale from the map.

I think of the coatsal regions on map as "the part of the ocean than coastal guns can reach, and naval guns can return fire".
The on-map representation is enlarged to leave room for the ship icons....

Small chance that there will be a game-rule change, unless it is incorporated into RoP/VGN first..... ...and then WIA might get it after release of those two games.

WIA patches are strictly limited to "CTD or game-breakers".
You have an interesting idea, but it doesn't qualify as "game-breaker".

[squarian]

OK, trying some tests using my current 1.06 AWI '75 campaign:

Howe's fleet in Charleston (lvl 8 harbor) with virtually every combat ship (i.e. all except transports), more than adequate supply because I built to lvl 2 depot some time ago, area showing green in supply filter, nothing new entered or left the area during these turns:

12/81 men 8402 / power 795
1/82 8402/797
2/82 8402/800
3/82 8402/804

[arsan]

12/81 men 8402 / power 795
1/82 8402/797
2/82 8402/800
3/82 8402/804

I guess that is not the 100% men power of the fleet isn't??
Thats strange... playing as the USA i had recently a French fleet (around 700-1000 strength points) take a beating (around 50-60% red) on the naval boxes (yes the AI still manage to do that to me from time to time ) and refit to 100% strength at Charleston in 3-4 turns IIRC
That was on 1.06 too...
Surely you are not under siege there aren't you??

[squarian]

I guess that is not the 100% men power of the fleet isn't??
Thats strange... playing as the USA i had recently a French fleet (around 700-1000 strength points) take a beating (around 50-60% red) on the naval boxes (yes the AI still manage to do that to me from time to time ) and refit to 100% strength at Charleston in 3-4 turns IIRC
That was on 1.06 too...
Surely you are not under siege there aren't you??

No - definitely not under siege and definitely not at full strength - many elements at half or less strength. One reason I'm wondering if it has to do with the size of the fleet: when I've had smaller squadrons (say Drake and 3-4 frigate units) in for repair the damaged elements regain strength reasonably quickly.

Or is it Howe himself somehow?

[arsan]

Hi!

I have no idea if fleet size has any effect on repair speed
Only Pocus may know if he has put some code for this inside... it would make sense as a port would take much longer to repair 60 ships of the line than a couple of brigs
But have never noticed... maybe my fleets were not huge enough??
Another possible thing i just though about (supply related again )
On my games i've noticed that a stack seems to not start recovering hist until his inherent supply stocks are at 100%. If the region supply production is only a little bigger than the stack's need (region in green in any case), the stack may need several turns until their depleted supply stocks are filled to the brim and he start taking "new recruits".
Maybe your big fleet was very low on food and took several turns to replenish??
In any case, do the fleet finally (after whatever turns) get repaired to 100% or he is not repaired at all??

Cheers!

[squarian]

Yay - played another few turns, checking the fleet. Same conditions as before: adequate supply, etc., except that I detached all the frigates and just left all the SOL units. The fleet finally recovered, not 100%, but say 90%.

Since the only thing I changed was the size, I'm more suspicious than before that the number of units and/or elements must have something to do with the rate of recovery. If anyone has more evidence either way, I'd love to hear about it.

[lodilefty]

Well, I would hope that a large fleet would recover hits more slowly!



Historically, the shipyards in North America were nothing like those in Europe. The Brits in particular supressed the development of shipbuilding in the colonies to both protect the 'technology', their Naval supremacy [anticipating Mahan ], and to preserve the raw materials for home use. NA shipyards were heavily slanted toward merchant ships [US Navy didn't really build anything much until after the AWI], so repairs of battle damage should be vey slow.....

[elxaime]

The best way to get your fleet up and sailing is to spread your damaged ships around. If you are the British, New York, even though it is a big port, often has a large British garrison and they compete for supply. Send your most damaged ships to Halifax and you will be amazed at how quickly they are back to full strength. Halifax has a decent port, a good depot and a small garrison, which means lot of capacity for ship repairs. Newport can serve this purpose for the same reason, as can some of the ports around the eastern New England coast (if you hold them).

Combat should continue to be fairly indecisive (in terms of ship losses) so long as you plan carefully and don't stick your neck out too far.

That said, there are some legitimate concerns with the naval simulation. The Caribbean is cramped and poorly simulated - much too abstract. Fleets should also be able to call at home ports. You shouldn't have a situation where a French fleet dies on the vine because they can't sail to France for repairs (this is a notorious problem in the FIW scenario if Louisbourg happens to fall in winter, often the French fleet lacks the supply to make it to the Carribbean and the St. Lawrence is frozen, yet they can't sail to France).