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Captain_Orso
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Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:53 am

Fort Pulaski demonstrated how little most System Three forts were of value by the start of the war. There were certainly some exceptions I'm sure. Fort Monroe for example was not simply a masonry fort. Most of it's walls were basically earthworks with masonry walls surrounding and covering them. But I'm not sure if any other forts were built the same way.

Basically the game misses the differences between the System Three forts and forts like Fisher, which were earthwork forts. Purely masonry forts should be more vulnerable to high-velocity rifled gun fire as opposed to the smooth bores which existed when they were built, but AFAIK that's also not taken into account during bombarding.

Fort Fisher was only subdued when Porter realized that firing shot directly at the defending batteries would not be affective and ordered shell to be fired aiming so that the shells exploded above the batteries. The defending guns were thus silenced one after the other, allowing Gen. Terry to land his troops north of the fort.
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grimjaw
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Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:54 am

LOL I've never looked at Fort Delaware before. It's right in the middle of the Delaware River


Yeah. :) Just try to imagine the British landing an army of 30,000 effectives on that island. Possible in the game, sure, but a joke in reality.

Fort (or Castle) Williams and "Fort Wood" (just entrenched artillery) are the same way. Both were constructed on islands in the bay and should not be accessible from the mainland. The map suffers when it comes to these. Size does matter :mdr:

An open harbor rule sounds like a good idea.

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Keeler
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Sun Nov 02, 2014 3:34 pm

Captain_Orso wrote:This means that to sail into Albemarle Sound safely you should first have to take Fort Clark to be able to sail into Pamlico Sound and then sail north past Roanoke Island into Albemarle Sound.

Currently much of that corner of the map is in disarray. Little fits geographically and therefor also not historically in their meaning for the war.


True, but Pamlico Sound wasn't (and still isn't) navigable by any ship with a serious draft. By historical standards, nothing larger than a gunboat should be able to enter the sounds. The Burnside Expedition had troublemoving in through Hatteras Inlet in February 1862, even though they attempted the crossing with no large ships.


What has always annoyed me about this map area is that Fort Clark's harbor is on the Pamlico side, which as far as I know means it can't be subject to bombardment (if I am wrong about that, this point is moot). Naval bombardment played a significant role in Fort Hattera's and Clark's surrender, so the in-game setup isn't accurate. But I can justify it by telling myself that Roanoke Island's defenses weren't within reach of the big naval guns, so by thinking of the forts as a representation of a series of fortifications (as I mentioned earlier) it mostly washes out.
"Thank God. I thought it was a New York Regiment."- Unknown Confederate major, upon learning he had surrendered to the 6th Wisconsin.

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Sun Nov 02, 2014 5:23 pm

True, but Pamlico Sound wasn't (and still isn't) navigable by any ship with a serious draft.


That's one of the more annoying things about the game. A large portion of the sounds have a depth of six feet or less. There ought to be another type of water terrain: shallower. Wind-powered brigs and transports shouldn't be able to travel up rivers like the Mississippi (unless towed), even if the depth is sufficient to handle their draft.

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Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:38 pm

Keeler wrote:True, but Pamlico Sound wasn't (and still isn't) navigable by any ship with a serious draft. By historical standards, nothing larger than a gunboat should be able to enter the sounds. The Burnside Expedition had troublemoving in through Hatteras Inlet in February 1862, even though they attempted the crossing with no large ships.


I think the issue was getting the ships through the small channel in the middle of a terrible storm. I also remember reading that once the storm had abated, they still had some issues with getting some of the deeper draft ships over the sand bars. They did manage this though through a simple well known trick, by sailors anyway. They rode the ship onto the sandbar--which wasn't dry, but under the water but too shallow to allow sailing over it--and simply waited for the water flowing out of the sound to wash the sand from around and under the ship out. Then they lunged forward again and so on until they deepened the channel for normal sailing.

Keeler wrote:What has always annoyed me about this map area is that Fort Clark's harbor is on the Pamlico side, which as far as I know means it can't be subject to bombardment (if I am wrong about that, this point is moot). Naval bombardment played a significant role in Fort Hattera's and Clark's surrender, so the in-game setup isn't accurate. But I can justify it by telling myself that Roanoke Island's defenses weren't within reach of the big naval guns, so by thinking of the forts as a representation of a series of fortifications (as I mentioned earlier) it mostly washes out.


What doesn't help is that the names of the forts are different depending on what you read. At any rate, there was one battery on the Pamlico Sound side south of the harbor, which is often called Fort Hatteras. This is the one that had he heavy guns. I always guessed that the other battery--with smaller guns on the Atlantic side was what was called Fort Clark. Both were very close to each other. But this entire installation is at Hatteras Inlet. The Inlet closer to Roanoke Island is Oregon Inlet. What condition that inlet was--whether deep draft ships might sail through--I have no idea.
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Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:42 pm

grimjaw wrote:That's one of the more annoying things about the game. A large portion of the sounds have a depth of six feet or less. There ought to be another type of water terrain: shallower. Wind-powered brigs and transports shouldn't be able to travel up rivers like the Mississippi (unless towed), even if the depth is sufficient to handle their draft.


How many transports which the US Navy employed were purely canvas sailing ships and how many were actually steam at the time I have no idea. The game should allow for steam frigates to sail all the way up to Vicksburg, but only when the river is deep enough. I'm not sure exactly when it starts to shallow, but I do remember reading about Farragut saying that he'd leave Vicksburg by so-n-so a date so as to not risk being caught in the shallows.
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:38 am

Captain_Orso wrote:I think the issue was getting the ships through the small channel in the middle of a terrible storm. I also remember reading that once the storm had abated, they still had some issues with getting some of the deeper draft ships over the sand bars. They did manage this though through a simple well known trick, by sailors anyway. They rode the ship onto the sandbar--which wasn't dry, but under the water but too shallow to allow sailing over it--and simply waited for the water flowing out of the sound to wash the sand from around and under the ship out. Then they lunged forward again and so on until they deepened the channel for normal sailing.


This is all true. However, Pamlico Sound was, and is, extremely, shallow and would have been a limiting factor in what ships both sides could have used.

Captain_Orso wrote:What doesn't help is that the names of the forts are different depending on what you read. At any rate, there was one battery on the Pamlico Sound side south of the harbor, which is often called Fort Hatteras. This is the one that had he heavy guns. I always guessed that the other battery--with smaller guns on the Atlantic side was what was called Fort Clark.


That's my best understanding as well, but both sites are gone. There are some artifacts from Fort Clark at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, NC. The building is fairly close to the site of both forts.

Captain_Orso wrote:Both were very close to each other. But this entire installation is at Hatteras Inlet. The Inlet closer to Roanoke Island is Oregon Inlet. What condition that inlet was--whether deep draft ships might sail through--I have no idea.


The present Hatteras and Oregon inlets both opened during the same storm in 1846. Presently, Oregon Inlet is the deeper of the two inlets but only because it is dredged. Given the nature of inlets, I don't imagine it was substantially different from Hatteras Inlet in 1862. In the historic period, only Oracoke Inlet has been naturally stable and deep enough for larger vessels to pass safely.

As as side note, you can still see the wreck of the Oriental, which grounded just south of Oregon Inlet during the Burnside Expedition. And the Monitor wreck is about 15 miles off Cape Hatteras.
"Thank God. I thought it was a New York Regiment."- Unknown Confederate major, upon learning he had surrendered to the 6th Wisconsin.

Merlin
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:25 am

Captain_Orso wrote:You can blockade the harbor of a fort, but that only means 2 things:
1. The production of the location is halved.
2. No naval supply may be moved in through the harbor.

This means that if there is another path for supply to follow to get to the fort, the blockade will have little affect on holding the fort.


Pretty much every fort can be blockaded. The problem is many of them are effectively islands and putting a fleet outside the harbor cuts them off from land completely. They get no supply. The ones that aren't are often adjacent to one or two regions of really poor terrain and cutting river supply kills them in the same manner.

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:53 am

This is rapidly getting away from the thread topic, so I'll try reign it in.

How many transports which the US Navy employed were purely canvas sailing ships and how many were actually steam at the time I have no idea. The game should allow for steam frigates to sail all the way up to Vicksburg, but only when the river is deep enough. I'm not sure exactly when it starts to shallow, but I do remember reading about Farragut saying that he'd leave Vicksburg by so-n-so a date so as to not risk being caught in the shallows.


Certainly there were steam-powered transports. From what I read, the paddle-steamer was commonly used at the time for ocean transport of cargo and passengers. They had sail-rigging as a backup in the event of engine failure and to save on fuel. For the sake of simplicity we could say that all ocean-going transports are steam-powered. But they had a deeper draft than river steamers. If the game depicts inlets besides Hatteras as open, and the entire sound as traversable by coastal water units, as it is now, the forts at Hatteras Inlet and below are completely pointless. They can be bypassed at any time. Since Roanoke Island is not depicted beyond its drawing, there's a gaping hole in the CSA coastal defenses that wasn't there IRL. (Didn't Henry Wise try to further obstruct traffic in the area near Roanoke by sinking obstructions in the sound?) Yet Fort Gadsden is depicted, incorrectly, even though it played virtually no part at all.

I vote for closing down the inlets above Hatteras and changing water travel in some way so that deep-draft vessels (i.e. ocean-going transports AND brigs) cannot enter the sound above Pamlico. This forces the Union player to either land at Norfolk or deal with the Hatteras Inlet batteries. The map probably isn't going to be changed to add in Roanoke island or other things. But it only requires changing some region files to prevent travel from Currituck and Cape Hatteras into Oregon Inlet. Terrain restriction (shallower sound) in that area would go some way to simulating the difficulty the Union faced.

Either that or creating a channel-dredging unit. ;P

If you're going to go to the trouble to simulate river depth, why not current direction, too? It took longer to travel up the Mississippi than down it.

WRT forts,

The problem is many of them are effectively islands and putting a fleet outside the harbor cuts them off from land completely. They get no supply.


Merlin, I am experimenting with removing harbors from many of the forts and seeing what effect this will have on supply and blockades.

I have moved some of the forts completely. Fort James, TX, which as far as I can tell is completely bogus, has been moved to the approximate location of Galveston Island. The island had several batteries and there were some on the mainland. I've found accounts of up to 22 guns scattered across various emplacements. I've turned Fort James into a redoubt (the Post of Galveston or Galveston Barracks, not sure yet), and changed the artillery composition. The region for Fort James I will probably turn into a water region. It's drawn at Bolivar Point. There was a small battery placed at Bolivar point in 1864, but no large fort until the 1890s: Fort Travis.
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-coast1.html#galv

[ATTACH]31970[/ATTACH]

The game doesn't depict it in the graphic below but Fort Brown, TX, is now Fort Polk. I've added a settlement for Port Isabel and kept the harbor. Up to the point of the war, that was a major port for cotton shipments. Fort Brown is moved to Brownsville, TX, much closer to its actual location, and changed to a redoubt. Neither of these have much in the way of guns, but I add some artillery at the forts at Laredo and Ringgold Barracks. This is a national border area, and several companies of US regulars surrendered here. There ought to have been some artillery lying around.
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-south.html#polk
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qcf10
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-south.html#brown
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbf07

[ATTACH]31969[/ATTACH]

Merlin
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 7:35 am

You certainly know your way around the files. I'm excited to see what this looks like and how it affects play.

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 11:31 am

Merlin wrote:Pretty much every fort can be blockaded. The problem is many of them are effectively islands and putting a fleet outside the harbor cuts them off from land completely. They get no supply. The ones that aren't are often adjacent to one or two regions of really poor terrain and cutting river supply kills them in the same manner.


Yes-no-maybe :blink:

If a fort is adjacent to only one water region and you have a single, unopposed naval combat element in that region, the supply cannot enter that region (riverine transport pool). If the region has a jump-link over it (rivers), supply can still jump over that region the same as moving units, and can be blocked the same as moving units. There are 3 supply distribution phases, so there are 3x 10% chance per turn that some supply will get through to such a fort.

If the fort's harbor's exit-point is in a coastal region, it can also draw naval supply, unless the exit-point is actually blockaded. I have no idea why it is so easy to block normal supply from entering the exit-point--one single unopposed naval combat element--but you need an entire blockade to block naval supply at all.

If supply can get to the fort overland--even if through swamp--except in deepest winter--some supply will probably get through. This depends a lot on the actual "pull" in the fort. Supply units such as flatboats, transports and supply trains all cause pull, especially in conjunction with units needing supply.

So, a normal garrison in a fort will not pull supply as hard as a large one, but it wall also not use as much and can therefor last pretty long with the fort blockaded. Blockading alone has no direct affect on a fort's garrison beyond what I mentioned above.
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 12:09 pm

grimjaw wrote:This is rapidly getting away from the thread topic, so I'll try reign it in.

Certainly there were steam-powered transports. From what I read, the paddle-steamer was commonly used at the time for ocean transport of cargo and passengers. They had sail-rigging as a backup in the event of engine failure and to save on fuel. For the sake of simplicity we could say that all ocean-going transports are steam-powered. But they had a deeper draft than river steamers. If the game depicts inlets besides Hatteras as open, and the entire sound as traversable by coastal water units, as it is now, the forts at Hatteras Inlet and below are completely pointless. They can be bypassed at any time. Since Roanoke Island is not depicted beyond its drawing, there's a gaping hole in the CSA coastal defenses that wasn't there IRL. (Didn't Henry Wise try to further obstruct traffic in the area near Roanoke by sinking obstructions in the sound?) Yet Fort Gadsden is depicted, incorrectly, even though it played virtually no part at all.

I vote for closing down the inlets above Hatteras and changing water travel in some way so that deep-draft vessels (i.e. ocean-going transports AND brigs) cannot enter the sound above Pamlico. This forces the Union player to either land at Norfolk or deal with the Hatteras Inlet batteries. The map probably isn't going to be changed to add in Roanoke island or other things. But it only requires changing some region files to prevent travel from Currituck and Cape Hatteras into Oregon Inlet. Terrain restriction (shallower sound) in that area would go some way to simulating the difficulty the Union faced.


Although the average depth was certain very shallow in the sounds, I know there are and were natural channels, which probably didn't change that much, being protected from the raging Atlantic storms by the Outer Banks.

grimjaw wrote:Either that or creating a channel-dredging unit. ;P


It could start out in Jamaica and be called the CSS DredgeLock :D

grimjaw wrote:If you're going to go to the trouble to simulate river depth, why not current direction, too? It took longer to travel up the Mississippi than down it.


I requested that once, plus having boat be able to be disabled and drift downstream and then be able to be salvage, and if half the stuff I wanted to put in the game were done, you'd puke ;)

grimjaw wrote:WRT forts,

Merlin, I am experimenting with removing harbors from many of the forts and seeing what effect this will have on supply and blockades.

I have moved some of the forts completely. Fort James, TX, which as far as I can tell is completely bogus, has been moved to the approximate location of Galveston Island. The island had several batteries and there were some on the mainland. I've found accounts of up to 22 guns scattered across various emplacements. I've turned Fort James into a redoubt (the Post of Galveston or Galveston Barracks, not sure yet), and changed the artillery composition. The region for Fort James I will probably turn into a water region. It's drawn at Bolivar Point. There was a small battery placed at Bolivar point in 1864, but no large fort until the 1890s: Fort Travis.
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-coast1.html#galv


But if forts were specifically put at harbor locations to protect the harbors, that kind of makes no sense. Besides, if such a fort were captured, the Union could never get any supplies to it.

grimjaw wrote:[ATTACH]31970[/ATTACH]

The game doesn't depict it in the graphic below but Fort Brown, TX, is now Fort Polk. I've added a settlement for Port Isabel and kept the harbor. Up to the point of the war, that was a major port for cotton shipments. Fort Brown is moved to Brownsville, TX, much closer to its actual location, and changed to a redoubt. Neither of these have much in the way of guns, but I add some artillery at the forts at Laredo and Ringgold Barracks. This is a national border area, and several companies of US regulars surrendered here. There ought to have been some artillery lying around.
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-south.html#polk
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qcf10
http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/tx-south.html#brown
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbf07

[ATTACH]31969[/ATTACH]


I'm totally surprised that the game engine allowed for having 2 different location within the same region. That's very weird :blink: .
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 1:41 pm

But if forts were specifically put at harbor locations to protect the harbors, that kind of makes no sense. Besides, if such a fort were captured, the Union could never get any supplies to it.


I'm not certain what you were objecting to here. Removing the harbor from a fort? Moving the Galveston forts?

I'm totally surprised that the game engine allowed for having 2 different location within the same region. That's very weird


The settlement and fort are in the old Fort Brown location ($Ft_Brown_TX). I added a fort structure to Brownsville ($Cameron_TX, different region). I haven't tested nifty new Port Isabel yet besides moving things in and out of it. There's no graphic for a hardened settlement, which is why I guess this one shows up like it does.

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:51 pm

So where the Fort Brown used to be is now Port Isabelle, and Brownsville is now fortified with a redoubt. That was a misunderstanding on my part.

I thought you were simply removing the harbors from the game. That would suck :neener:
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grimjaw
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:27 pm

I thought you were simply removing the harbors from the game. That would suck


Well, a few. In places where there wasn't one or even the equivalent. Because there's a harbor at Galveston, and because there's no Galveston Island, I have to leave the harbor in place. If map had been drawn differently and there was a Galveston Island, I'd have tried to put the fort there instead and still left the harbor. There are enough areas on the land side of that island to make a decent harbor for ships.

To put a ship dock on the land side of Fort Fisher would just clog up the way to the harbor at Wilmington. Since there's a harbor at Wilmington and adjacent land travel from there to Fort Fisher, I removed Fort Fisher's harbor. You can always debark units from a transport from a water region adjacent to Fisher if it floats your boat, so to speak.

I could do the same for Fort Caswell, but there's enough of an area on the bay side to make a small harbor, and one that wouldn't clog up the traffic. So I'll probably leave it.

That's the way I'm approaching the harbor situation. I tried to put Fort Delaware on an "island" (see picture) but I only manage to goof up the links to it when I edit the region file. I'm just guessing after a few fields. I'll have to move it back. I wish I could say it had been totally converted into a prison, but it had guns and I can't just erase it from existence.

[ATTACH]31971[/ATTACH]

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:22 pm

You do realize that if you remove the harbors form the forts that you will have great difficulty trying to bring artillery in and out of the forts.

Yes, it makes no sense that you can sail 1000 ships into Fort Fisher, but who's going to do it anyway? If you've managed to take Fisher, you might as well take Wilmington with its great big, deep ship, harbor and large city and everything that goes with it. If I don't have Wilmington yet, who am I to worry about blocking the Fear River Estuary for Confederate traffic :evilgrin:

To move forts around and such you will have to edit the map, which I don't know how to do, though I believe I do have the map editor :siffle: . I think the forts need to have their regions made to look like a magnifying glass were over them. it would eat up some of the regions around them, but most places will have room for that. I'll have to make another illustration to show what I mean--picture=1000 Image--.
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:24 pm

Yes, it makes no sense that you can sail 1000 ships into Fort Fisher, but who's going to do it anyway?


A gal we know named Athena.

To move forts around and such you will have to edit the map, which I don't know how to do


To move where they display on the map is easy. In the region files, Coo0 through Coo3 are coordinates for certain structures and units. Coo0 is for any city/fort in the region + plus something else (friendly units?). Coo1 is enemy units, Coo3 is the harbor graphic. I've never learned what Coo4 is. As I'm sure you know, you can find coordinates on the map by turning on error logging and using the mouse pointer. Coo0 = X|Y|somethingelsewhichInevermesswith. The graphic will be centered on the XY coordinate.

Other than that and understanding one or two other things, I don't muck about with the region files. I don't really have to. The majority of what I'm changing is not stored there.

I can live with the map. Sure it could be larger and more detailed, but I remember the map from AACW (and it's two or three Mexico boxes) and I'm grateful for CW2. If it got much more detailed I'd start wishing for a more tactical simulation, and right now for that I switch over to Company of Heroes :D

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:41 pm

Captain_Orso wrote:Yes-no-maybe :blink:

If a fort is adjacent to only one water region and you have a single, unopposed naval combat element in that region, the supply cannot enter that region (riverine transport pool). If the region has a jump-link over it (rivers), supply can still jump over that region the same as moving units, and can be blocked the same as moving units. There are 3 supply distribution phases, so there are 3x 10% chance per turn that some supply will get through to such a fort.

If the fort's harbor's exit-point is in a coastal region, it can also draw naval supply, unless the exit-point is actually blockaded. I have no idea why it is so easy to block normal supply from entering the exit-point--one single unopposed naval combat element--but you need an entire blockade to block naval supply at all.

If supply can get to the fort overland--even if through swamp--except in deepest winter--some supply will probably get through. This depends a lot on the actual "pull" in the fort. Supply units such as flatboats, transports and supply trains all cause pull, especially in conjunction with units needing supply.

So, a normal garrison in a fort will not pull supply as hard as a large one, but it wall also not use as much and can therefor last pretty long with the fort blockaded. Blockading alone has no direct affect on a fort's garrison beyond what I mentioned above.


We're actually kind of talking about the same thing. A prime example is Charleston. Park the Atlantic fleet there and the Sumter batteries go poof after a few turns if the Confederate player hasn't bought replacements for the guns to restore their strength prior to the event. The other two will follow after a bit, depending on how often they get supplies over those 'orrible swamps, which isn't often unless you chose to buy a few flatboats and build depots there. That's more or less why I suggested the most exposed Confederate coastal forts should possibly begin with a depot. They're not going to make much of a difference in combat since a player is probably going to show up with a division or more to reduce them anyway, but parking a fleet to starve them to death isn't going to be worth the cost in ship replacements.

Interestingly, Jarkko found out the bombardment "bug" is back for CW2. You can give a bunch of good ships to Farragut, set him to evade, and pass back and forth in front of the fort. The fleet will trigger bombardment and grind the batteries to dust, taking far fewer hits than it should.

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Mon Nov 03, 2014 7:32 pm

grimjaw wrote:A gal we know named Athena.


Oh, her :love:

grimjaw wrote:To move where they display on the map is easy. In the region files, Coo0 through Coo3 are coordinates for certain structures and units. Coo0 is for any city/fort in the region + plus something else (friendly units?). Coo1 is enemy units, Coo3 is the harbor graphic. I've never learned what Coo4 is. As I'm sure you know, you can find coordinates on the map by turning on error logging and using the mouse pointer. Coo0 = X|Y|somethingelsewhichInevermesswith. The graphic will be centered on the XY coordinate.

Other than that and understanding one or two other things, I don't muck about with the region files. I don't really have to. The majority of what I'm changing is not stored there.

I can live with the map. Sure it could be larger and more detailed, but I remember the map from AACW (and it's two or three Mexico boxes) and I'm grateful for CW2. If it got much more detailed I'd start wishing for a more tactical simulation, and right now for that I switch over to Company of Heroes :D


If you move the sprites to outside of their regions you will get some very strange things happening. If you want to test what will happen directly to can open the console and start the "regionsprite" command (end the command with "stop"). It will allow you to drag sprites to where you want them, but from my experience, if they're outside of their region, they cease to have meaning and might crash the game.

Merlin wrote:We're actually kind of talking about the same thing. A prime example is Charleston. Park the Atlantic fleet there and the Sumter batteries go poof after a few turns if the Confederate player hasn't bought replacements for the guns to restore their strength prior to the event. The other two will follow after a bit, depending on how often they get supplies over those 'orrible swamps, which isn't often unless you chose to buy a few flatboats and build depots there. That's more or less why I suggested the most exposed Confederate coastal forts should possibly begin with a depot. They're not going to make much of a difference in combat since a player is probably going to show up with a division or more to reduce them anyway, but parking a fleet to starve them to death isn't going to be worth the cost in ship replacements.


I'm not sure what you're explaining here. Park the Atlantic Fleet where? Parking it in Charleston Bay will do nothing to moving supplies between Charleston and the forts. Only in Charleston River will do anything, and to put the AF there you have to pass all three forts at once. Then supply cannot use the riverine transport pool to move supplies through Charleston River to to Sumter and Moultrie. Fort Johnson is directly adjacent to Charleston City, so it should have no great issues getting supplies at all.

Regardless of the size of the fleet in Charleston River, it can still only block supply 90% of the time per supply distribution phase, and there are 3 supply distribution phases at the start of each turn during which each location must be checked if it can send supplies.

Charleston City should keep Fort Johnson fully of supplied by land without issue. It will also have a 30% chance each turn to get supplies to Fort Moultrie. And Fort Johnson will also have a 30% chance of getting supplies to Fort Sumter each turn, if Charleston Bay is also blocked. If it's not, supply will just go over the bay by riverine transport without issue, and can then also go to Fort Moultrie through Charleston Bay via riverine transport.

Merlin wrote:Interestingly, Jarkko found out the bombardment "bug" is back for CW2. You can give a bunch of good ships to Farragut, set him to evade, and pass back and forth in front of the fort. The fleet will trigger bombardment and grind the batteries to dust, taking far fewer hits than it should.


I've ridden the DAR-Dragon a couple of times to try to reduce a fort to ashes with a huge ironclad fleet. I don't know who commanded it; probable Foote. At any rate, it didn't work. The IC fleet loosed cohesion too quickly and after the second bombardment does 0 damage.

I've never tried it with Farragut on Evade Combat though, so I'll have to see what that does myself. Seeing is blinding-BELIEVING, I mean believing Image
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Merlin
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 8:38 pm

Captain_Orso wrote:I'm not sure what you're explaining here. Park the Atlantic Fleet where? Parking it in Charleston Bay will do nothing to moving supplies between Charleston and the forts. Only in Charleston River will do anything, and to put the AF there you have to pass all three forts at once. Then supply cannot use the riverine transport pool to move supplies through Charleston River to to Sumter and Moultrie. Fort Johnson is directly adjacent to Charleston City, so it should have no great issues getting supplies at all.

Regardless of the size of the fleet in Charleston River, it can still only block supply 90% of the time per supply distribution phase, and there are 3 supply distribution phases at the start of each turn during which each location must be checked if it can send supplies.

Charleston City should keep Fort Johnson fully of supplied by land without issue. It will also have a 30% chance each turn to get supplies to Fort Moultrie. And Fort Johnson will also have a 30% chance of getting supplies to Fort Sumter each turn, if Charleston Bay is also blocked. If it's not, supply will just go over the bay by riverine transport without issue, and can then also go to Fort Moultrie through Charleston Bay via riverine transport.



I've ridden the DAR-Dragon a couple of times to try to reduce a fort to ashes with a huge ironclad fleet. I don't know who commanded it; probable Foote. At any rate, it didn't work. The IC fleet loosed cohesion too quickly and after the second bombardment does 0 damage.

I've never tried it with Farragut on Evade Combat though, so I'll have to see what that does myself. Seeing is blinding-BELIEVING, I mean believing Image


Yes, sorry. I meant both the bay and the river. It's not that the forts get no supply at all, but the several turns when they don't, and I'm not seeing them demand enough for more than a turn-by-turn basis. Nearly every fort on the coast has 0 GS every turn. Not because they don't get supply, but because they seem to stockpile none, requesting just what they need. Admittedly, you need the Hartford and a few 'clads or blockade flotillas to absorb the fort hits, but it's not that hard to do.

The DAR abuse comes from having a big fleet and not bombarding, and Farragut significantly reduces the number of hits taken. It may take a few turns, but you can grind down the fort's guns. I don't really consider it a big issue, mostly because players have far better things to do with their most powerful naval units, but it is there.

grimjaw
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Mon Nov 03, 2014 9:11 pm

It's not my intention to place the structures outside their region. The attempt with Ft. Delaware was just a gimmick. It does help in some cases to move them around within their region. It can get so crowded in some fort regions I can't see what's going on. I reduced the size of the fort and city graphics slightly. Honestly I'd like to knock them down to 2/3 of their vanilla size, but just 10 pixels is enough to get some wiggle room.

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Captain_Orso
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Tue Nov 04, 2014 9:49 am

Merlin wrote:Yes, sorry. I meant both the bay and the river. It's not that the forts get no supply at all, but the several turns when they don't, and I'm not seeing them demand enough for more than a turn-by-turn basis. Nearly every fort on the coast has 0 GS every turn. Not because they don't get supply, but because they seem to stockpile none, requesting just what they need. Admittedly, you need the Hartford and a few 'clads or blockade flotillas to absorb the fort hits, but it's not that hard to do.


I can only think that there's something you're not saying. I haven't played the South in a long time, but I cannot remember ever capturing a fort with no supplies in it unless the South had no riverine transport capacity and it was besieged for a while.

Merlin wrote:The DAR abuse comes from having a big fleet and not bombarding, and Farragut significantly reduces the number of hits taken. It may take a few turns, but you can grind down the fort's guns. I don't really consider it a big issue, mostly because players have far better things to do with their most powerful naval units, but it is there.


I think the fewest hits I've ever seen Farragut take was 16, but he still only scores 3 at the most and those land on the fort artillery. and that on the first round of bombardment. After that it goes downhill for the fleet.

grimjaw wrote:It's not my intention to place the structures outside their region. The attempt with Ft. Delaware was just a gimmick. It does help in some cases to move them around within their region. It can get so crowded in some fort regions I can't see what's going on. I reduced the size of the fort and city graphics slightly. Honestly I'd like to knock them down to 2/3 of their vanilla size, but just 10 pixels is enough to get some wiggle room.


The forts used to have some animated graphics on them. Now I think they can only have an animation if you're building a depot. And IIRC there were some add-on graphics--maybe to show if there was a depot in the fort--but I don't know if there are anymore. So the actual fort sprites could be reduced greatly in size, as long as the flags were still on the mast to show how many land and naval stacks are inside, but that won't increase the overall size of the region, just make it easier to hit the ground when dropping troop into the region.
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