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Hi there... could somebody help me with a question on ship to shore bombardment..... does there need to be a harbor in a region for ship bombardment to take place?

Thanks

I think you need to have a land unit present in the region for your fleet to support with a bombardment.

AFAIK, no.
but the bombardment will only occur to support a land attack...

If this is true, I think there might be a problem. In our game my ships that had orders to bombard didn't support my attack from Fort Lawrence to Grandpre. Unless this only shows up in the log- there was no mention in the battle report or the monthly report.

I had ran some tests and made an attack on a fort with a harbor and an attack on one without... the one with a harbor had a successful bombarment, the one without did not.

Can run the test again and provide save files if needed.

ironwarrior wrote:If this is true, I think there might be a problem. In our game my ships that had orders to bombard didn't support my attack from Fort Lawrence to Grandpre. Unless this only shows up in the log- there was no mention in the battle report or the monthly report.

I had ran some tests and made an attack on a fort with a harbor and an attack on one without... the one with a harbor had a successful bombarment, the one without did not.

Can run the test again and provide save files if needed.

....now I'm not sure what the design really is

If you wish, go ahead and upload a save, but we need a reply from dev team as to what the rule actually is

The more I think....

It makes sense that there must be a port for navy to bombard.

Bombard is 'support fire', and ranges og guns were generally less than a mile.
We can thus interpret a 'structure' without a port as 'inland, beyond range'....

So, since you say bombard works if a port is present, I'd say it's WAD....

Ok so in my tests I did an "amphib" landing on Grandpre since I already know that I don't get a bombardment if I attack from Fort Lawrence, and no bombard that way either...



the next turn Monckton was attacked by the French and no bombard... then I did the same assault on Saint Jean with a successful bombardment (ships returned to harbor for winter)...





It seems to me that I have had ships bombard in support of units in a region without a harbor before, but not since earlier patch versions. I could be mistaken though. Anyway I'll attach the files in case they are of any use.


(I deleted some files to manage the size- let me know if I deleted the wrong ones)

Hi!

In your first example, had your troops assault orders and actually engaged the units inside the fort?
If they just landed on the region and there was no combat i think it's normal there was no bombarding in support.
As the Grandpre units did not have guns to fire on the ship, no bombardment was triggered because of this either.

In any case, now that i think of it... what Lodi says looks pretty reasonable: that ships cannot bombard structures without port, as they can be way inland.
In this example, fort Granpre could be several days of march inland from the coast, and 100 miles out of ships range. Regions are very big.
A structure with a port is coastal and could be fired upon from the adjacent sea region.

What i have no idea is how this woudl work on regions without structure Is the battle inland or on the coast
Regards!

Hey arsan,

I can't remember if they had assault orders in this example, but I have tested that before with assaulting the fort, and had the same result. Actually at Saint Jean neither the ships nor the infantry had assault orders (both on defend orders), but the ships did bombard.

Lodi's explanation sounds reasonable, but I just need clarification... a bit confusing.

From the manual, page 37:

A Naval Force Will Bombard The First Coastal Structure Or Entrenched Position It Encounters Provided A Friendly Land Force Is Present In The Region.

I guess the question is, does the "Entrenched Position" need to be in a region with a "Coastal Structure" to be applicable.

Good question! but i'm not positive about the answer
Regarding the bomabrding on St Jean i think it's because it does not happen as a combat support bombardment but as a fire exchange between the fort guns and the ship guns (if i recall correctly st jean has some guns on the fort) so it does not matter if you have ordered an assault or not.
Just by passing by the gunned fort of standing on the sea area with bombard order will trigger the fire exchange.
Regards

You're right that Saint Jean has guns that will fire on ships passing by, but notice the difference in the language when that happens. Note the screenshot above that it says "I. Fleet has bombarded Armee de de Lery" and "I. Fleet has bombarded "Garrison de Saint Jean" compaed with... "Fort La Tour has bombarded us..."

This leads me to believe that offensive or defensive stance has no effect on ability to bombard.

Hi Arson and Ironwarrior.... I think in our Pbem my force of raiders and indians were on a defensive stance and Monktons british force was on an attack stance.... I think a fleet only being able to bombard a fort with a harbor sounds right... as Arsan has said settlements can be 100s of miles inland.... it kinda makes sense I think

Agreed, I'm glad I wasn't the only one confused about this though.