coastal artillery on rivers

[nerod]

Is it a waste to build and place coastal artillery in rivers forts/cities to prevent gunboats from passing a point like Cairo or Fort Henry/Donnelson. Or is a different type of Artillery more cost effective and give the same protection?

[Kotik]

Yes it is as the fort will use the built-in artillery to engage the ships.

[Hobbes]

I think there is a problem with coastal artillery in both coastal and river regions. I've never been tempted to buy it. It tends to get taken out too easily by Union fleets and is expensive. Maybe buying it at the time was a mistake for the CSA or maybe there is a problem in the way it is modelled in the game?

There are a few things that have come up in conversation with Pocus that may improve the way coastal forts and the heavy artillery in them may perform.

1. Forts blockading adjacent sea zones (optional with an exported variable - may not be good for AI - possible variable export intended for PBEM play only)
This would make forts far more important as supply would be blocked from the sea.

2. Some community work done on harbour exit points. A case in point being Wilmington.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5177&highlight=wilmington

From the attached map you can see that Wilmington should not recieve supply from the coast. It should only arrive via the Cape Fear river after fort Fisher has been taken.

If forts like this become more important (As they were historically) it may be more worthwile to buy expensive artillery to place in them.

Cheers, Chris

[Jabberwock]

2. Some community work done on harbour exit points. A case in point being Wilmington.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5177&highlight=wilmington

From the attached map you can see that Wilmington should not recieve supply from the coast. It should only arrive via the Cape Fear river after fort Fisher has been taken.

If forts like this become more important (As they were historically) it may be more worthwile to buy expensive artillery to place in them.

Point of debate: What is interesting to me is the way the official Ft Fisher website cropped that map to emphasize the importance of the fort. The middle of the three roads leading east from Wilmington terminates millimeters off the edge of the map, at a harbor town called Seagate, at the south end of Masonboro Inlet. There should have been another fort built there, but wasn't. Not a great harbor like Wilmington, but certainly usable for landing troops and supplies. I believe it probably wasn't used because planners on both sides considered it too close to Wilmington for military use, a fast reaction force could get there in about 2 hours marching, and the Federal generals didn't realize the weakness of the Wilmington garrison. (Plus they were fixated on the fort, kind of an 'If you build it, they will come.' scenario).

In modern times Wilmington-Seagate takes 10-15 minutes, but that is due to traffic / stop lights.

I don't think the Confederates historically bought / built much in the way of coastal artillery.

Regards,
John

[Hobbes]

Thanks for the info about Seagate John. I did think that as the region is so large there must have been one or two other harbours yet Wilmington as a level 7 harbour is the focal point of the region and I think that the game should reflect this with only 1 harbour exit onto the Cape Fear river with fort Fisher denying supply through Wilmington if it is in the hands of the opposing force.

Without control of Wilmington supply can still arrive into the region via transport ships off the coast or landing supply wagons so I think this reflects small harbours like Seagate fairly well. (New edit as this has come up again, I believe a blockaded habour will still get 50% supply from the coast and the region + landing supply as above is always possible).

Cheers, Chris
P.S. I also wonder about how much marsh there was around Wilmington and the effect it has on the game. If you lose Wilmington (as I have in my PBEM game) it is almost impossible to get it back as the marsh terrain is very difficult to attack into. Was it really that difficult of a terrain to attack?

[PBBoeye]

2. Some community work done on harbour exit points. A case in point being Wilmington.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5177&highlight=wilmington

From the attached map you can see that Wilmington should not recieve supply from the coast. It should only arrive via the Cape Fear river after fort Fisher has been taken.

Yes, I want to be in on that. I don't like the impossible harbor access/exit points that exist. Most of the ones on the Mid-Atlantic and East Central rivers are pretty inaccurate.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[PBBoeye]

It is. I've deleted the errant adjacency entries for Westmoreland, VA as there should be one access/exit only, not three.

But by deleting adjacency values, I wonder if that causes a disruption, or break, between regions or regions/rivers? What I mean is, does a region somehow not recognize that it is adjacent to another region then, and this prevents movement between regions?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Pocus]

if the harbor is adjacent to both shallow and coastal waters, then all coastal water regions adjacents to it, which has a link that is not preventing a ship to move will be an exit points (so if you add a #26 jumplink, you prevent an exit points as supposed by Gray_Lensman).

if the harbor is only adjacent to shallow waters, then they are used.

[PBBoeye]

????????

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Pocus]

yes, river regions are either shallow freezable water or shallow non-freezable water types, in the terrains.xls file.

[Hobbes]

Pocus:

To be clear, by shallow waters, are you referring to the River Regions, that run between the land regions? I assume that the (#26 Naval Interdiction JumpLink) will block Naval movement into those River Regions just as with any other regions that has specific (#26 Naval Interdiction JumpLinks) between them.

For others:

If there are ports that will need to have their access points reworked/limited, I will need to be informed by others knowledgeable about those specific ports, what exactly needs to be changed, especially regarding the addition of the (#26 type JumpLink(s)) referred to above.

For gamer information, the #26 JumpLink types seen in some .rgn files is used to specifically block Naval unit type movement between any two regions. This is useful in preventing what could be illegal naval movements and in the case we are referring to above, it will also be useful in limiting harbor access points to specific "non-blocked" adjacent regions.

I would be happy to do some investigation into harbour exit locations but I’m hoping a future patch will include a variable flag to allow forts to prevent ocean supply to adjacent regions (may be PBEM only) and for town bombardment to only work when the bombarding ships are in a harbour exit region. If this was done the situation around Fisher/Wilmington would be very accurately portrayed and I’m sure we would find the same to be true with other harbours.

If these game changes are not made I think changing exit points would have a fairly minimal impact on the game and may not be worth the effort. (But finding out how it can be done would be very useful!)

Many thanks,
Chris

[Hobbes]

As usual Pocus has come up with the goods so I will start with a look at Wilmington. Once I understand how to change the harbour exit regions I will change Wilmington and run a few tests to make sure supply works as intended. If so I'll then start looking at other harbours. If anyone wants to take a look at realistic harbour exits now is the time to do it!

Cheers, Chris

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Pocus]

As usual Pocus has come up with the goods so I will start with a look at Wilmington. Once I understand how to change the harbour exit regions I will change Wilmington and run a few tests to make sure supply works as intended. If so I'll then start looking at other harbours. If anyone wants to take a look at realistic harbour exits now is the time to do it!

Cheers, Chris

As usual, you tell me if it don't works properly, some features were done fast these days. Thanks!

[Hobbes]

Some useful harbor maps here which you can view online :-

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps/subjectA.html


Or download and use Irfan viewer with plug-ins to view.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/415586

Cheers, Chris

[Hobbes]

I've now done some testing with this and it seems to be close to working but doesn't quite manage it.

I changed the harbour exit for Wilmington to the Cape Fear river (this is now the only exit). I changed the fort blockade bonus to 18 to make sure
Fort Fisher would be able to blockade Wilmington should it fall to the Union.

I then turned the AI off and started the 1862 scenario. The first thing I did was to destroy the depot in Wilmington to make things easier to understand.
I then invaded Wilmington with a Union force and took the town. The town was then shown to be blockaded with the blockade symbol - so Fort Fisher was doing it's job. Wahay!

But unfortunatly the supply level in Wilmington still went up every turn thereafter - I don't understand where this supply is coming from? Does a port blockade not stop all supply coming in? There are no other Union towns around it for supply to come from.

Two other problems. The AI was off and I was moving no units yet after several months the blockade vanished as if the fort was no longer there.
I also noticed pillage symbols in the blockade and shipping boxes!

I'll send the turn and my amended files tomorrow if you want them Philippe.
Cheers, Chris

[Pocus]

Yes send me the save please, thanks.

[Hobbes]

Out of interest how does a depot generate supply? If it was in a region surrounded by hostile enemy controlled regions would it generate as much supply as if it were in a region surrounded by friendly regions?

Cheers, Chris

[Rafiki]

I think so. Haven't seen anything in the docs that say otherwise, but I'll admit I haven't checked in-game for it.

[Le Ricain]

A depot does not generate supply. The depot needs to be part of a network of depots and wagons, separated by no more than 5 provinces, stretching back to your home country. I believe that the provinces need to be 25% controlled by you before they will pass supplies. However, if your depot is surrounded by enemy controlled provinces, you will get no supplies. The only exception would be if you manually moved supplied wagons to the target depot.

Having 25% control of a province will allow use of the province's railroads to transport your supplies. Of course, the amount of supplies shipped this way is dependent upon your economic investment in railroad transport. RR's can transport a lot of supplies.

Having transports in the shipping box will allow you to have supplies shipped to your wagons and depots which are in coastal provinces. The amount of supplies shipped by this method is dependent upon your investment in transports for the shipping box.

If your depots and/or wagons are connected by a navigable river, which is free of enemy warships or emplaced artillery, supplies will be able to flow to them. The amount of supplies shipped by this method is dependent upon your economic investment in river transport.

Depots hold and therefore transfer more supplies than do wagons.

[jimwinsor]

A depot does not generate supply. ...

Actually, I think a depot does generate a small amount of supply: 4s/1a...see rules pg. 34.

[Pocus]

Basically, this is as Le Ricain says, with the small amendment from JimWinsor. We added a very small supply production to depot and forts, to ease the AI. But the supply production is before all done by cities and harbors.

[lodilefty]

Good Idea...

If you can gather a list of regions that need to be changed/reworked, we'll generate some "official" region Adjacency/JumpLink .rgn files so they can be put into a later update. Keep in mind that in order to be an acceptable "official" change, that you cannot deliberately delete an "Adjacency" entry from a specific region file, as this will cause other problems. Instead it needs to be done by the introduction of a "Naval Interdiction JumpLink" (#26), which specifically blocks Naval Movement between two specified regions.

I'd like to try some things around this, but I don't really understand the syntax for the commands in .rgn files. Should I also assume that there may be commands in the scenario files that supercede these .rgn items (as in the railroad situation?)


Is there a reference somewhere (I found the Modders guide for BoA, but it appears to be mostly about events).

Thanks.

[Hobbes]

A depot does not generate supply. The depot needs to be part of a network of depots and wagons, separated by no more than 5 provinces, stretching back to your home country. I believe that the provinces need to be 25% controlled by you before they will pass supplies. However, if your depot is surrounded by enemy controlled provinces, you will get no supplies. The only exception would be if you manually moved supplied wagons to the target depot.

Having 25% control of a province will allow use of the province's railroads to transport your supplies. Of course, the amount of supplies shipped this way is dependent upon your economic investment in railroad transport. RR's can transport a lot of supplies.

Having transports in the shipping box will allow you to have supplies shipped to your wagons and depots which are in coastal provinces. The amount of supplies shipped by this method is dependent upon your investment in transports for the shipping box.

If your depots and/or wagons are connected by a navigable river, which is free of enemy warships or emplaced artillery, supplies will be able to flow to them. The amount of supplies shipped by this method is dependent upon your economic investment in river transport.

Depots hold and therefore transfer more supplies than do wagons.

Thanks Ricain, can you explain why a port like Wilmington continues to generate supply when surrounded by hostile regions and blockaded from the sea? Is this supply coming from the region Wilmington is in or does some still come through a blockade?

Cheers, Chris

[Le Ricain]

Thanks Ricain, can you explain why a port like Wilmington continues to generate supply when surrounded by hostile regions and blockaded from the sea? Is this supply coming from the region Wilmington is in or does some still come through a blockade?

Cheers, Chris

Wilmington has access to the Cape Fear River, which is navigable up to the province of Robeson, NC. Robeson contains the city of Lumberton and is also connected by rail to the depot located in Raleigh, NC. Assuming that there are no emplaced enemy artillery or warships along the river, I suspect that supplies are being funneled into Wilmington using this method.

[Hobbes]

Wilmington has access to the Cape Fear River, which is navigable up to the province of Robeson, NC. Robeson contains the city of Lumberton and is also connected by rail to the depot located in Raleigh, NC. Assuming that there are no emplaced enemy artillery or warships along the river, I suspect that supplies are being funneled into Wilmington using this method.

All these areas are in CSA hands though. Wilmington is a blockaded island held by the Union in my example.

Cheers, Chris

[Le Ricain]

All these areas are in CSA hands though. Wilmington is a blockaded island held by the Union in my example.

Cheers, Chris

If both sea exits for Wilmington are each blockaded by four naval units (or six in the case of Union emplaced artillery) and the surrounding provinces are obviously in CSA hands, then no supplies should get through. The garrison soon starves. Having only ever played as the Union, I have never been on the receiving end of this tactic, but have used it many times when besieging coastal cities and forts.

Apparently, depots do generate a small amount of organic supplies, but I am assuming that in your case that the Union force in question is larger than one or two units. Anything larger would soon exhaust the depot's supplies.

If you are sure that the Union force is receiving supplies and is healthy, then it must be a bug.