Moving along coastal waters w/ironclads

[Jagger]

Is it possible to move coastal ironclads/monitors along the coast without being bombarded by every fort as you pass them. I think I just lost the Monitor to a fort trying to move from Charleston back to Philadelphia.

[Le Ricain]

Is it possible to move coastal ironclads/monitors along the coast without being bombarded by every fort as you pass them. I think I just lost the Monitor to a fort trying to move from Charleston back to Philadelphia.

In a word, no. You can help the situation by moving your ships using the evade button.

[Jagger]

In a word, no. You can help the situation by moving your ships using the evade button.

Actually I did use evade on the return trip of the monitor.

Against the AI, I sent an entire US fleet down to blockade Charleston. The fleet contained the Monitor which meant the entire fleet hugged the coast. By the time they had run the guns of every fort along the coast between Charleston and NYC, the fleet was pretty battered. A few months later, I decided they weren't doing any good considering their damage and lack of cohesion and sent them home. I split the monitor off this time so the rest of the fleet could avoid the forts but the monitor didn't survive the second run down the gauntlet.

In the meantime, I have discovered the AI is building quite a few armored vessels in Mobile and New Orleans. They are destroying my harbor blockading fleets of armored frigates, frigates, brigs, etc. My ocean going ships can't defeat their armored ships. Yet I can't get my ironclads/monitors down to New Orleans or Mobile without suffering huge damage or being sunk as they have to run the gauntlet of forts. So I cannot maintain a brown water blockade of the Gulf Coast until I capture all the forts along the Atlantic Coast. Once I capture those forts, I can then get my ironclads down to New Orleans and Mobile to do a brown water blockade.

In real life, forts cannot initiate combat against ships. Ships must decide to enter the range of the forts before forts can damage ships.

So how are people doing brown water blockades of the Gulf Coast if the rebels have armored vessels in New Orleans and Mobile?

IIRC, Frank Hunters ACW had this same problem with ships and forts way back when.

[Rafiki]

I use any monitors I have up north (Virginia coast being the southern inclusive limit, mostly), and use brigs and frigates for the brown-water blockades and escorts that venture further south.

One advantage with that is that they don't have to stick to coastal waters and therefore move faster to and fro.

[Wilhammer]

Build enough monitors, and them send them so that they share the damage across them running those gauntlets, but be sure to send them to a place they can have a base.

I sent an 18+ Monitor fleet from Ft. Monroe to Cairo, Il.

Fatigued, hungry, ammo low, and even a monitor sunk, it got there, did some damage on the way, and is now part of the River Ironclad Fleet - lots more use there than around Va.

Now, if you want to take on New Orleans, you might want to capture a port somewhere an put a Naval Engineer there to help with repairs.

It's kind of like this; if you are familiar with War in the Pacific or Uncommon Valor, then consider your Monitor fleet being in need of a base to interdict and engage bigger enemy bases; your Guadalcanal is to Rabaul as Fort Pickens is to Mobile, for example.

Sending them deep without a base nearby to fuel up, feed, and fix from is going to result in a dead or at least ineffective fleet.

[Le Ricain]

I do not know many ironclads that the South in your game has built. In my games, the South has usually built 2 - 3 ironclads and six gunboats. These are no problem for Farragut and a fleet of 12 steam frigates and armoured frigates. If the South has a larger number of ironclads than that, just send more frigates. The trick is Farragut.

[Jagger]

I do not know many ironclads that the South in your game has built. In my games, the South has usually built 2 - 3 ironclads and six gunboats. These are no problem for Farragut and a fleet of 12 steam frigates and armoured frigates. If the South has a larger number of ironclads than that, just send more frigates. The trick is Farragut.

Those armored frigates are pretty strong. My guess is that 3 could probably take on an ironclad. With a good leader like Farragut, maybe 2. If the South can't build more than 2 or 3 ironclads, the US can take them out with numbers.

Although now, I am not sure there is much reason to build more than one or two ironclads in the Northeast. They are not needed for naval defense as the South can't threaten the NE by sea except with the Merrimac. Yet offensively, the northeastern ironclads are severely limited in their ability to move south along the coast.

I did a test moving 4 ironclads from Philadelphia to Forts Zachery and Jefferson at the tip of Florida. The 4 ships, using defensive posture and evade, took 58 total hits during the trip from forts. Three of the four ironclads were barely afloat upon arrival at their destination. Once at Fort Jefferson and Zachery, they recovered cohesion quickly but months to recover the manpower losses. Which means Rebel forts have to be taken before ironclads can be moved south along the east coast without taking devastating damage. And there are a lot of rebel forts along the coast. Which means if other vessels, armored frigates, can do the offensive job along the Gulf Coast without worrying about forts, there is no need to build ironclads in the Northeast except to counter the Merrimac.

To be honest, I think the modeling of interaction between ships traveling along the sea coast and forts needs to be re-examined. Although after my first thoughts on the problem, I realize it might be a fairly difficult problem to solve.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Queeg]

It has already been suggested elsewhere that a button to enable/disable monitor fort bombardment should be added. Hopefully, this will be implemented, then the decision to initiate monitor/fort bombardment will be in the hands of the gamer to decide whether his monitors are going to engage the fort or not.

I think I agree. Coastal forts should bombard ships only:

1. If the ship bombards the fort, or

2. If the ship tries to move past the fort inland - i.e., not down the coast but inland from the coast.

[Massattack]

It should just require a change in the chance to evade. If set to evade combat, greatly increase the chance to evade forts, without screwing up the chance of being found by patrolling ships. Hopefully something Pocus can fix when he comes back from his well deserved "vacance".

Regards

NB As per Queegs post, just set this for coastal locations. Any attempt to pass up rivers should increase the forts bombardment chances.

[Jagger]

It should just require a change in the chance to evade. If set to evade combat, greatly increase the chance to evade forts, without screwing up the chance of being found by patrolling ships. Hopefully something Pocus can fix when he comes back from his well deserved "vacance".

Regards

NB As per Queegs post, just set this for coastal locations. Any attempt to pass up rivers should increase the forts bombardment chances.

My first thoughts also had to do with coastal locations. Unfortunately many coastal cities have a harbor composed of coastal water. An assault past the forts involves moving from coastal water to coastal water. Same conditions as moving down a coast without an intent of assault.

Increasing evade values would help to avoid forts along both coastal locations and rivers. Plus it would also have a negative impact on normal naval actions also using the evade values.

PS: Rafiki and Wilhammer, my apologies. I missed reading your responses from yesterday. Thanks for the feedback!

[bloodybucket]

How seaworthy were these ships? I know the Monitor sank in a storm, and as a class the ironclads probably weren't the first choice for operations in rough weather. Even if the fort/evasion factors were changed to make moving past coastal forts less damaging, (I think only a few ironclads were done in by gunfire, most were victims of scuttling or mines) were they moving up and down the coast freely, or used more locally due to weather?

[Jagger]

How seaworthy were these ships? I know the Monitor sank in a storm, and as a class the ironclads probably weren't the first choice for operations in rough weather. Even if the fort/evasion factors were changed to make moving past coastal forts less damaging, (I think only a few ironclads were done in by gunfire, most were victims of scuttling or mines) were they moving up and down the coast freely, or used more locally due to weather?

I have wondered about that myself. How were they moved down to the Gulf Coast? Did ironclads move down the east coast or were river ironclads moved down the Mississippi and then along the coast?

PS: Anyone else notice the error in the blockade values of the Union river_ironclads? The value is 0 when it should be 3. I may put up a fixed file later.


Here is the fix. Just changed the blockade value from 0 to 3 in the models file for river_ironclad. To fix, unzip file in the models file of the gamedata folder and overwrite the original river_ironclad file.

[Jagger]

How seaworthy were these ships? I know the Monitor sank in a storm, and as a class the ironclads probably weren't the first choice for operations in rough weather. Even if the fort/evasion factors were changed to make moving past coastal forts less damaging, (I think only a few ironclads were done in by gunfire, most were victims of scuttling or mines) were they moving up and down the coast freely, or used more locally due to weather?

I have wondered about that myself. How were they moved down to the Gulf Coast? Did ironclads move down the east coast in short trips from harbor to harbor or were river ironclads moved down the Mississippi and then along the coast?

PS: Anyone else notice the error in the blockade values of the Union river_ironclads? The value is 0 when it should be 3. I may put up a fixed file later.

[Jagger]

How seaworthy were these ships? I know the Monitor sank in a storm, and as a class the ironclads probably weren't the first choice for operations in rough weather. Even if the fort/evasion factors were changed to make moving past coastal forts less damaging, (I think only a few ironclads were done in by gunfire, most were victims of scuttling or mines) were they moving up and down the coast freely, or used more locally due to weather?

I have wondered about that myself. How were they moved down to the Gulf Coast? Did ironclads move down the east coast in short trips from harbor to harbor or were river ironclads moved down the Mississippi and then along the coast? I wonder if river ironclads could operate along coastal waters or strictly sheltered water.

PS: Anyone else notice the error in the blockade values of the Union river_ironclads? The value is 0 when it should be 3. I may put up a fixed file later.

[Wilhammer]

Most Monitors (if not all) were towed great distances - they were horrible at sea, and the crew would of been beat to hell getting there, and the ships would likely not quite of made it under their own power with limited fuel and seaworthiness.


My Monitor Fleet move to Cairo was totally unrealistic, so perhaps all the damage we now get 1.06 is justified.

However, they WERE remotely deployed by the Union, and I don't think any fort ever fired on one as it passed by, unless it was deliberate Fort Run, like around Charleston or Mobile.

5-10 miles off the coast is a bit far fetched for forts to fire en passant on them.

I would think that if the Monitors were given 'no bombardment and evade orders', no coastal fort should fire on them. River forts should still have a chance to engage due to the tight situation.

However, the game does not model reliability (or the politico/rivalry/contractual abuse screw ups) inflicted on the Union Monitors' construction.

These things broke down often, and some of them that were built were so totally unseaworthy or poorly designed/construction managed, that they were white elephants - and the number so afflicted was high; very high.

Perhaps, during the Hurricane Season, if a Monitor is using coastal waters to move, it should have a chance of critical storm damage.

[Jagger]

I would think that if the Monitors were given 'no bombardment and evade orders', no coastal fort should fire on them. River forts should still have a chance to engage due to the tight situation.

The problem is then monitors could move past coastal forts protecting coastal harbors/cities into the harbors without interference from the coastal forts.

The problem is how to differentiate moving past a fort to capture the protected harbor/city/river versus simply moving along the coast staying well clear of an objective protected by the fort.