Ye olde Shipping Box

[mjmooneywi]

OK
What is the return on investment for the amount of merchant ships and or Transports in the box?..I know it varies and is based on raiders..Is there also a maximum of Transports to be used? What other variables are taken into effect?

Is there a formula out there somewhere?

Thanks.

[Captain_Orso]

OK

All right!

What is the return on investment for the amount of merchant ships and or Transports in the box?

It is diminishing.

..I know it varies and is based on raiders..

No, Raiders influence it, but it is not based on them. If I had to pick a basis, I would say, it's based on the number of Transports/Merchantmen[SUP]1)[/SUP] in the Shipping Box.

Is there also a maximum of Transports to be used?

None of which I know.

What other variables are taken into effect?

As I said above, it is influenced by the Law of Diminishing Returns, which means the more transports in the Shipping Box, the less each one produces individually.

Is there a formula out there somewhere?

I've never seen one, but you might want to look at this Union shipping in the AACW forum.

I'm not absolutely certain, but I believe NM influences returns; the higher the Union NM, the higher the returns.

Raiders greatly reduce returns on Union Shipping, and I'm not sure if the presence of Raiders in the Shipping Box also suffers from the Law of Diminishing Returns, but that might be the case.

Thanks.

Prego


[SUP]1)[/SUP] Actually, the total transport capacity of all ships in the Shipping Box. Transports and Merchantmen are very similar, if not identical, in their transport capacity, but Brigs, for example, also have a transport capacity.

[Gray Fox]

I keep a notebook of things I have scrutinized. In it is a note that the return on investment for ocean transports placed in the shipping box was 11 turns at 3-3.5 economic units (money and or materiel) per turn. I play at the Colonel level, so mileage may vary.

[mjmooneywi]

So several games and restarts later I have not caught one raider in the box. How much of a spotting value should I have..I realize you stated that I should be shuttling ships in and out. Should I have one big blob of ships and shuttle one brig in and out? Or should I have dedicated 3 Hunter killer groups constantly moving (one going in, one going out one resting at port)? How many 'escorts' should I have to stop the confederate "uboats" should they be green green or should they be belligerent in posture?

[ArmChairGeneral]

It doesn't happen that often, no matter what, in my experience, you aren't necessarily doing anything wrong. As the CSA I put my free frigates into the box and forget them, and they get found and engaged like 3-5 times per game. My blockade runners, OTOH, get found a lot more often, offhand maybe every 10 to 15 turns, perhaps because there are twice as many boxes.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Someone with a little more knowledge on the actual mechanics should weigh in here, but naval OMBs have a special ruleset for combat that is a lot simpler than that for any other kind of combat, and from what I can dimly recall, posture is not taken into account. I would think you would want to add some ships with a high Patrol value.

Posture is important, though, because especially if you are moving in and out of the OMB, half the time you will be in a regular sea tile, and will want to be in Offensive in case you can catch any enemies moving to or from the box.

[Gray Fox]

I divide all of the Blockade Squadrons into two stacks and put one in each blockade box. I use Union brigs to scout or block the Potomac. I divide the remaining ships up into three stacks with equal numbers of steam and sail Frigates. One group is attached directly to the merchants/ocean transports in the shipping box as escorts on blue/green. Another is stationed next to Fort Monroe blocking land access to the fort and protecting Chesapeake Bay. The third is in port. These rotate to facilitate the incoming and outgoing effect in the shipping box and to resupply. The escorts aren't hunter killers, but they will eventually catch the raiders and fire them up.

[Captain_Orso]

I haven't looked into hunting raiders so much, but raiders like the Alabama are just steam frigates. Other than having Simmes there's really nothing special about them.

First, if you had any allusions to the idea, that you'll reenact the battle between the Alabama and the Kearsarge, lay them to rest. It's not going to happen.

What your real goal is, is to keep the Alabama--and whatever other vermin Davis can put to see--out of the Shipping Box as much as possible. To do this, it's enough to damage, or at least reduce the cohesion of, the raider(s).

So, unless you have reason to believe that the raiders are joined together into a squadron, you only really need a fleet with a ship with good detection values--sail frigate has the best, so nothing else is worthy of looking into--, and at least 1 with good fighting values--you have plenty of steam frigates; armored frigates are far too expensive to send raider hunting--so there's no point to look behind the steam frigates.

It would be reasonable to expect that 1 squadron each of sail and steam frigates squadrons (each full squadron has 2 ships, but not all of these units given to you by events in the game actually have 2 ships; you will have to look) pulled together into an Hunter-Killer-Group™(fleet). That would be 4 combat ships per fleet, and you could make a whole bunch of these.

From my experience, when any ships enter or leaves the Shipping or Blockade Boxes, there is an increased chance that they will be caught or catch an enemy fleet. Try it out. Take your Hunter-Killer-Group™'s, divide them up into 2 or 3 sub-groups and start sending them into the Shipping Box. As soon as they have arrived, send them into the Blockade Box, or the North Atlantic Box, or simply to one of the near-coastal-waters regions, and then send them back into the Shipping Box.

Do this until their cohesion has reached about 60%, or depending on supplies and battle damage, then return them to a large harbor; Now York City is ideal for this. Let them recover and hits and cohesion and send them back out to hunt again.

[DrPostman]

I like to use all my Union brigs to form a fleet, with a few transports, that can
roll up the Atchafalaya river to where it connects with the Mississippi and
then back down again to take New Orleans. After that I build timberclads
there and go on raids into Texas and other parts UNDER Vicksburg.

[Rod Smart]

To add to the discussion- Union Brigs seem to provide no value whatsoever to income, despite their ability to transport.

I once put 60 of them into the box at once, and my income went up by 3 bucks.

[DrPostman]

Once I take NOLA I use my brigs in groups of 2 or 3 to take a unit to take
undefended towns along the coast.

[Captain_Orso]

I too have test using brigs in the Shipping Box to test their ability to produce income. They do produce income; just not much per element.

But that is to be expected. Shipping--and Naval Supply BTW--consider the transport capacity present in the Shipping Box, and not the number of ships.

A single Transport/Merchantman has a transport capacity of 10, while a brig has 1. So having 60 Brigs in the shipping Box is equivalent to 6 big, fat, Rubenesque Transports.