Why do Confederate coastal batteries melt away?

[Merlin]

I'd never even considered this to be a problem because I had always bought replacements for them, but in playing a game where I had other priorities, I noticed, every single battery eventually just evaporates. Replacements for the big guns are enormously expensive, and the Union has no such issues, so I'm assuming it has to do with supply? The odd thing is the battery at Island 10 attrite away as well, and that's with a depot and adequate river supply, so my initial theory having it related to lack of sea supply doesn't seem to fit the problem.

[ohms_law]

...I've never noticed that happen. Curious.

[Highlandcharge]

I was thinking the same, are you keeping them inside the forts?

[Merlin]

Yes, they're inside the forts. The needed replacements climbs into the 170's before a battery evaporates, and then seems to sort of stay there after two or three are gone. It's not a sudden thing, but occurs over 30+ turns. I just find it odd that Southern coastal batteries slowly deteriorate, but Union batteries never do.

[grimjaw]

Unlike the CSA, don't most, if not all, of the Union coastal batteries start at full strength? I don't know what effect that has, if any.

I haven't played the Union enough lately to notice a difference in the attrition rate, but I'm planning to next full game so I'll try to watch for it. As the CSA I'm usually pretty anal about my coastal forts and I spend more than I probably should on replacements for them. I usually keep them at one replacement at all times if I can afford it. May be the reason I haven't noticed it.

It doesn't make sense that they should lose that much. I think most of the coastal forts are in "civilized" regions. On top of entrenchment they are usually always in, that should reduce attrition by 30% (according to the wiki).

You might have already, but I looked at the model files for both. They each have their own faction-specific model, as well as different CMN templates. I can't find many differences in them, and nothing (to me) that would explain a faster deterioration rate. The faction-specific models don't have many details. Below are their CMN model templates.

The number of hits available to each might explain it, CSA 12 vs Union 18. Say each of them took 4 attrition hits, CSA now at 2/3 vs Union still at better than 3/4. On a bar graph for hits, that's going to show worse for the CSA every time, even with the same attrition rate. If they both had 20 batteries of respective type, Union has 120 more hits.

CSA template // Union template

UID = 30 // UID = 31
NationTag = CMN // NationTag = CMN
Name = Coastal Artillery // Name = Coastal Artillery
Alias = mdl_CMN_Coa // Alias = mdl_CMN_CoaExp
ShortName = Coastal Guns // ShortName = Coastal Guns
Text = $mdl_txt_CMN_Coa // Text = $mdl_txt_CMN_CoaExp
Family = $famHvyArty // Family = $famHvyArty
ImageID = symbol_costalarty.png // ImageID = symbol_costalarty.png
Color = $colCMNRegular // Color = $colCMNRegular
Sound_FactionTag = $sndNavalFire1 // Sound_FactionTag = $sndNavalFire1
SoundRangedRare = $sndNavalFire2 // SoundRangedRare = $sndNavalFire2
SoundRangedCmn = $sndNavalFire4 // SoundRangedCmn = $sndNavalFire4
SoundCloseRare = $sndNavalFire5 // SoundCloseRare = $sndNavalFire5
SoundCloseCmn = $sndFortDamaged // SoundCloseCmn = $sndFortDamaged
SoundDamaged = $sndArtDestroyed // SoundDamaged = $sndArtDestroyed
Portrait = mdl_CMN_NavalArty1.png // Portrait = mdl_CMN_NavalArty1.png
OffFire = 24 // OffFire = 26
DefFire = 24 // DefFire = 30
Initiative = 6 // Initiative = 7
Range = 9 // Range = 9
ROF = 2 // ROF = 2
Penetration = 4 // Penetration = 4
Protection = 5 // Protection = 5
TQ = 6 // TQ = 8
Assault = 5 // Assault = 5
Hits = 12 // Hits = 18
MenPerHit = 15 // MenPerHit = 15
HorsesPerHit = 0 // HorsesPerHit = 0
GunsPerHit = 2 // GunsPerHit = 2
Cohesion = 75 // Cohesion = 85
DmgDone = 5 // DmgDone = 5
CohDone = 15 // CohDone = 15
AsltDmgDone = 5 // AsltDmgDone = 5
AsltCohDone = 10 // AsltCohDone = 10
TargetType = $Naval // TargetType = $Naval
Move Type = $Wheeled // Move Type = $Wheeled
Move Ratio = 20 // Move Ratio = 20
CohMove = 50 // CohMove = 50
AtrMove = 2 // AtrMove = 2
BaseCohLoss = 8 // BaseCohLoss = 8
BaseAttrition = 8 // BaseAttrition = 8
DetectLand = 2 // DetectLand = 2
DetectSea = 4 // DetectSea = 4
Blockade = 0 // Blockade = 0
HideValue = 1 // HideValue = 1
Weight = 4 // Weight = 4
ProgRate = 20 // ProgRate = 10
Police = 0 // Police = 0
Patrol = 0 // Patrol = 0
Evasion = 1 // Evasion = 1
CapturePerc = 50 // CapturePerc = 50
IsSupport = 1 // IsSupport = 1
SupplyUsage = 2 // SupplyUsage = 2
SupplyStore = 6 // SupplyStore = 6
AmmoUsage = 4 // AmmoUsage = 4
AmmoStore = 20 // AmmoStore = 20
ShareSupply = 0 // ShareSupply = 0
SupHitPen = 25 // SupHitPen = 25
SupMovePen = 35 // SupMovePen = 35
SupCbtPen = 75 // SupCbtPen = 75
Ability0 = $abiEmplaced // Ability0 = $abiEmplaced
VPValue = 3 // VPValue = 3
POLValue = 0 // POLValue = 0
Money = 90 // Money = 100
Conscript = 2 // Conscript = 3
WarSupply = 52 // WarSupply = 80
Days = 120 // Days = 90

[Merlin]

Here's a good example:[ATTACH]31917[/ATTACH] Ignore the title. I uploaded it for another reason entirely.

Note how the Charleston forts have no batteries and a number of others are much worse off than their starting strength. You can pretty much ignore Union coastal battery replacements, but 180+ is kind of ridiculous when they eat about a quarter of the Confederacy's budget every turn for half a year just to catch up.

[minipol]

Does anybody know what the situation was in real life with the batteries?
Did they need this kind of (high) maintenance? I can't imagine that a lot of guns went out of action when just sitting there on the ramparts doing nothing.
Then again, I'm no expert so maybe there is some legitimate cause for the attrition?

[grimjaw]

I see the replacement numbers for the Union coastal batteries and they don't look any better. The Union units on the board look pretty healthy, but again, they start that way.

OK, help me out here a little. I'm going to assume in that saved game you were playing the CSA. Did you ever buy enough replacements to get the fort garrisons (men & guns) up to full strength? Were the garrisons ever put into passive/passive state, to prioritize replacements? As of right now, I can't explain it.

They are prohibitively expensive to maintain for the Confederacy. You can almost afford two new 20lb Parrot batteries in the place of what it costs to buy one coastal battery, and replacements for 20lbers are less than half.

Prices below not adjusted for inflation.
3 CSA coastal battery replacements: $183, 6 conscripts, 93 WS
3 CSA $fammedarty replacements (both CSA Columbiads and CSA 20lbers use that family): $84, 6 conscripts, 30WS
(no wait, I'm wrong about the Columbiads, they also use $famhvyarty)
3 CSA coastal batteries: $270, 6 conscripts, 156 WS
3 CSA Columbiads: $150, 6, conscripts, 72 WS
3 CSA 20lb batteries: $150, 6 conscripts, 54 WS

Cost to build a redoubt, 20lb Parrot battery and two militia units: $210, 30 conscripts, 86 WS, 5 VP (Copperhead RGD, 0 CP required)

I can't remember AACW very well, but CW2 ships bypass forts *all the time*. It's hardly worth it to keep pouring resources into CSA coastal batteries. Detect vs. sea is only one better than 20lbers or Columbiads, and Columbiads do about the same damage. Best thing about the coastal batteries is the range and 0 CP cost. But the range is superfluous against most ships, since they can't do much damage to units in an unbreached fort. If coastal batteries didn't start permanently fixed you'd almost be better off building a transport ship, rounding up three of the weakest coastals and combining them with a 6lber + an existing supply unit to make a new fort. Not so for the fort batteries; you can't buy new ones.

As far as the historical batteries go, I don't know what they left in place and what they didn't. Just this morning I finished reading an account of Du Pont's attack on Charleston harbor in April '63. The batteries were in good enough shape then to drive off nine Union ironclads, one of which sank shortly afterward. (Which reminds me, the torpedo RGD should be modeled differently)

The game models the coastal forts with one small set of brushes, when in reality they were anything but uniform (just like the CSA ironclads). Fort Fisher wasn't a 1st or 2nd system fort; it was built from the ground up by the CSA over the first year of the conflict. Whatever artillery was there was brought in, not scavenged from emplaced federal artillery. Fort Pulaski supposedly didn't even have a garrison in 1860, just a couple of caretakers. South Carolina manned it in 1860 after they seceded, so who knows what guns should be there? Fort Gadsden was abandoned after summer 1863 due to a disease outbreak, etc.

I doubt the coastal batteries would have sat loaded. That much black powder in the barrel would have been a waste if they had to pull a damp charge. Ammo would have sat in the magazine, and it wouldn't take much to maintain the cannons, just grease the tracks, move them around a bit and keep them oiled. Fire off a blank every once in awhile to clear channels. The sitting-still-in-a-supplied-fort-next-to-Charleston attrition rate really shouldn't be that high, at least not to the guns. Men and powder, sure.

[Merlin]

I see the replacement numbers for the Union coastal batteries and they don't look any better. The Union units on the board look pretty healthy, but again, they start that way.

OK, help me out here a little. I'm going to assume in that saved game you were playing the CSA. Did you ever buy enough replacements to get the fort garrisons (men & guns) up to full strength? Were the garrisons ever put into passive/passive state, to prioritize replacements? As of right now, I can't explain it.

They are prohibitively expensive to maintain for the Confederacy. You can almost afford two new 20lb Parrot batteries in the place of what it costs to buy one coastal battery, and replacements for 20lbers are less than half.

I never purchased a single replacement for the guns, and that's the first time I've ever done that. The Union needs very few replacements and starts out with a few anyway. I just loaded the Union side of that game and have no idea why their replacement situation is so bad. The only thing I can think of is the other guy bought a truckload of 20lb. guns and put them in the divisions, since I crushed a couple corps of the AotP over the previous few turns.

[grimjaw]

I haven't looked in awhile, but I don't think there are any free heavy arty replacements after the first of the full campaign. April at least; I never play July. Those few replacements don't really help much. If you had historical attrition turned on, that'll make another significant dent every winter.

Maybe historical attrition should be modified for artillery. Isn't it supposed to model losses due to disease and desertion? It shouldn't take nearly as much war supply to replace the *men* lost in an artillery crew. Conscripts + money and time to train the men, sure, but they guns are still there. Last I checked, 12lb Napoleons aren't susceptible to malaria, and the don't get homesick.

It's a difficult situation for the Confederates. But since they couldn't even afford shoes for their army ...

I don't think I can see all of the math that goes into attrition, historical or otherwise. This is all that's in the GameLogic.opt (not counting the cohesion loss section)

Code: Select all

// All coefficients in per cent. They modify the base value "BaseAttrition" (Model parameter)

// formula is:
// Historical Base Attrition (from model)/10000 * (100 + coefficients)/100 * DaysPerTurn * current Health

atrHarshWeaMod    = 50
atrVHarshWeaMod   = 80

atrCityScapeMod   = -30
atrPillagedMod    = 5   
atrLoyaltyMod     = -10
atrScorchedEarthMod = 10

I wonder if atrCityScapeMod will apply to forts.

[Merlin]

I always play with historical attrition. I'm playing a couple Union games right now, both still in 1861, so now that I'm paying attention I'll have to see how long it takes for losses to require replacements. Those 180+ points would be more like 200 or so with the Charleston and Pulaski batteries and almost 35 turns.

[Projekt Pasha]

I'm surprised you buy replacements for the coastal batteries when you play the CSA von Murrin/Merlin. I usually need the resources elsewhere....

[Captain_Orso]

I haven't looked in awhile, but I don't think there are any free heavy arty replacements after the first of the full campaign. April at least; I never play July. Those few replacements don't really help much. If you had historical attrition turned on, that'll make another significant dent every winter.

Maybe historical attrition should be modified for artillery. Isn't it supposed to model losses due to disease and desertion? It shouldn't take nearly as much war supply to replace the *men* lost in an artillery crew. Conscripts + money and time to train the men, sure, but they guns are still there. Last I checked, 12lb Napoleons aren't susceptible to malaria, and the don't get homesick.

It's a difficult situation for the Confederates. But since they couldn't even afford shoes for their army ...

I don't think I can see all of the math that goes into attrition, historical or otherwise. This is all that's in the GameLogic.opt (not counting the cohesion loss section)

Code: Select all

// All coefficients in per cent. They modify the base value "BaseAttrition" (Model parameter)

// formula is:
// Historical Base Attrition (from model)/10000 * (100 + coefficients)/100 * DaysPerTurn * current Health

atrHarshWeaMod    = 50
atrVHarshWeaMod   = 80

atrCityScapeMod   = -30
atrPillagedMod    = 5   
atrLoyaltyMod     = -10
atrScorchedEarthMod = 10

I wonder if atrCityScapeMod will apply to forts.

I believe the atrCityScapeMod will only apply to cities and that there should be a coefficient modifier for forts and redoubts and probably stockades.

The issue with artillery in general, is that in reality there are crews and there are guns and they are actually separate entities. The game however handles them as one entity. I believe therefore that "emplaced" guns--guns which are not moving--should not be lost to attrition, but rather their cohesion should suffer, since it's not possible to have a battery lose men, but not guns.

[pgr]

Ya, costal guns seem to be a bit glass jawed and darned expensive to maintain. I would support the idea that CSA costal batteries should start at full strength and be immune to attrition damage if inside their forts. Heck, the damage caused by big union fleets bombarding is hard enough to replace all by its self.

[Merlin]

Having played with this a bit more, both sides lose at roughly the same rate, but the Union starts with several replacement chits and no demand at all. The CSA starts with one chit which is immediately used. Combined with the lower number of hits in a CSA battery and their 66% starting strength, they attrite very quickly and evaporate with just a few turns of supply pressure.

I do like the idea of full strength batteries all around, and that would make them easier to maintain. I also do not see why they should have any fewer hits that their Union counterparts. I'm not so certain making them immune to attrition is necessary and that it wouldn't have unintended consequences, though it would be admittedly easier for both sides.

[grimjaw]

I believe the atrCityScapeMod will only apply to cities and that there should be a coefficient modifier for forts and redoubts and probably stockades.

So fort garrisons might fare worse to some degree under historical attrition.

The issue with artillery in general, is that in reality there are crews and there are guns and they are actually separate entities. The game however handles them as one entity. I believe therefore that "emplaced" guns--guns which are not moving--should not be lost to attrition, but rather their cohesion should suffer, since it's not possible to have a battery lose men, but not guns.

I agree. At least lower the non-moving attrition rate significantly for artillery.

I'm sure you all have taken note of corps artillery being seemingly invulnerable during a heavy enemy action. Yet somehow coastal artillery falls apart at the seams while idle. Due to what, the harsh language of garrison troops?

I do like the idea of full strength batteries all around, and that would make them easier to maintain. I also do not see why they should have any fewer hits that their Union counterparts.

I can see why they might have fewer hits, but again I don't think it would be anything uniform. They might have fewer guns or crews trained to man them. When the states seceded, surely not all of the men in the gun crews would have stayed on. CSA garrison troops consist of only one regiment, while Union garrisons are made up of three regiments, and I can attribute that to the same reason.

I'm also in favor of CSA fortress units to be unfixed. J. Davis initially wanted to protect all Confederate territory, but more than one military mind (Bragg, Lee, probably others) argued that some territory was too resource-intensive to defend. Forcing the CSA to have fixed units in a fort is ahistorical.

Now modeling the idea that state governments wanted protection for their harbors and coasts doesn't seem difficult, nor does it require keeping the existing artillery in place. The game will already check for the presence of units in an area. Have it check for minimum numbers of some family types (militia, line, arty, etc) in fort locations. Without meeting a quota you suffer some kind of penalty.

Besides all that, have you ever tried to get heavy arty into or out of those forts? For the majority of them, it takes transports, which the CSA doesn't have in abundance to start off with. To do it relatively quickly (2-3 turns) takes ocean transports, of which they have none initially. Otherwise you have to use fairly slow riverine steamboats or (gods forbid) flatboats: slow and slower. It's not like they can just move unfixed coastal/fort batteries whenever and wherever they want. You can't even spike them without first taking a hit. Unless it's an attrition hit, of course.

The movement restriction they have is restriction enough without being permanently fixed.

[Captain_Orso]

Yeaaaaaaa--No. When Lee and others promoted not filling every fort to their necessary capacity to defend against what might be expected to attack them. They did not intend on abandoning all of them until the Union started forming up to attack. The ideas was to leaving gun crews for the guns and a maintenance garrison to keep things in order; even forts will fall apart if they are not maintained. When an attack would showed to be imminent, then you fill out the garrison and bolster the defenses.

Coastal artillery is not mobile, nor was much of the artillery mounted in the old antebellum forts. They were made to sit in those forts and had no carriages to be moved in the field with. You can put anything, even houses, on some set of wheels, but that doesn't make them mobile.

--

If we're going off the original topic here, I think I have a more interesting quandary, what about those forts that were not actually forts and never had anything like the artillery the game puts in them? I'm speaking of the forts on Hatteras on the Outer Banks (Fort Clark and Morgan) and Fort Fisher. If you read descriptions of them, they were at the most small redoubts or entrenchments at the start of the war. Only Fort Fisher survived past '61, to be expanded and reinforced to what was eventually worthy of being called a fort.

None of these forts, as far as I know--ever had anything close to actual coastal artillery--especially the Hatteras forts, which were partly gunned only by small caliber field artillery, like 6lb-ers--and none of them were masonry forts at all.

It's no wonder the Union hardly ever attacks these over-bloated, outlaying installations.

What do you guys think, should Clark, Morgan (NC) and Fisher actually start out as redoubts with far less artillery than actual historic masonry forts like Sumter?

[grimjaw]

even forts will fall apart if they are not maintained.

Sure, but that isn't modeled in the game, any more than is restoring a system 1 or 2 fort from 5 breaches to pristine. I don't disagree with your points about fort garrisons, but I do think the guns should be unfixed. At the very least, they should be able to be spiked, which would not require mobility. We can agree to disagree about it. Under the vanilla 1.04 setup, I can destroy a fort with a wimpy militia unit, but the guns will have somehow survived the fort's destruction whether or not I place them outside the fort.

should Clark, Morgan (NC) and Fisher actually start out as redoubts with far less artillery than actual historic masonry forts like Sumter?

They should certainly be revisited, along with any number of other things but detailing them would be veering way off topic. (like Fort Cummings, NM, not constructed until 1863, etc)

[Jim-NC]

I would say we need different levels of forts, and a way to build/create them. Fort Fisher was always expanding for example. We would need a way to change the level of the fort if we make them weaker in the beginning, and it has to be something the CSA can do with their current resources (we don't need another white elephant that no CSA player can afford, and thus can't use in the game).

[grimjaw]

Since this is diverging quite a bit from the original topic, coastal artillery attrition, I'm going to start a new thread improvements with Orso's idea of modifying forts in the game.